


among the wildflowers

by heavyliesthecrown



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Slow Burn, Waitress!Betty, in which Riverdale is in the middle of nowhere, western adjacent and prairie adjacent, writer!Jug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2019-08-04 13:23:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 114,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16347521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavyliesthecrown/pseuds/heavyliesthecrown
Summary: On the edge of town there’s a sign that tells anyone who wants to know, exactly where they are. Nowhere. She’s known nowhere and its people, its rolling fields and flowers her entire life. He’s never been to nowhere before, but he figures it can’t be all that different from everywhere else he’s been.Or – what makes a place feel like home.





	1. Daisy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to bugggghead for lending her eyes, ears, time, and thoughts. It is beyond invaluable.

 

**_Seven._ **

There are wildflowers between her toes.

Her bare feet pound against the packed, damp earth, kicking up mud and dirt with each footfall.

 _Faster_ , she thinks. _Just a little bit more._

And that’s all it takes.

An increase of her heartbeat by just a few strokes, a slight quickening of her elbows punching madly at the wind behind her, and just like that, she’s tearing right past a blur of red hair and a freckled face painted over with shock and a wide, open mouth.

To be able to run with the wind like this is unlike anything else. To feel everything in the world pushing her forward, to feel every element vibrating with her, to hear every ancient song singing in time with her labored breaths is all the music and magic she’ll ever need.

Her hair blows back away from her face, and the air around her turns so sharp that it almost hurts when she sucks in her breaths.

She feels so alive when she runs like this.

She feels so free.

“Okay,” Archie wheezes, bare feet skidding to a stop so quickly and so suddenly that they dig right into the dirt. “Okay – you win.”

She spins herself in a victory circle, arms thrown out at her sides and the dress painted with flakes of mud swinging and billowing out around her. “Told you I’m faster than you.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Archie says, timbering down and collapsing onto his back, the weight of him bending and crushing the stems of the flowers beneath him. “I don’t care.”

 _What a baby,_ she thinks.

 _What a sore loser_.

But she lies down next to him anyhow because she’s been taught to be a gracious winner.

“Hey,” she says, pointing to the sky. It’s her peace offering, an act of goodwill. “That one looks like a cloud.”

Archie laughs, his newly-missing bottom tooth showing a hint of his blue tongue when he does; they’d been eating ring pops earlier, snuck out of the Andrews’ pantry and tucked away into the sides of their shoes. “Betty, they’re all clouds.”

“I know,” she says, resting her head on her cupped palms behind her. She sticks her own tongue out, crossing her eyes as she peeks at the color. Ruby red. _Strawberry._ “Where do you think they’re going?”

“The clouds?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Archie says, flipping over on his stomach to face her. There are two new freckles on the top of his nose and she wonders when they appeared.

“I think they go far away from here,” she says. “Like to the ocean. Or to the rainforest. Or somewhere with lots of snow. Did you know that’s called a tundra?”

“Yeah, because I’m in the same class as you.”

“Well,” Betty says, frowning. Sometimes Archie doesn’t pay attention in class and it’s not her fault if she’d assumed he’d miss a thing or two from time to time. “I think they go there.”

“Maybe,” Archie concedes, flattening the dirt under his hands. He’s about to draw out his initials right there in the earth and hers right alongside his. His strokes are practiced, as if he’s done it thousands of times. As if he will do it a thousand times more. “Hey, look,” he says, slapping her on the arm for her attention. “Your initials say _‘ba.’_ Like a sheep. You’re Betty, Betty black sheep.”

“It’s B-C, not B-A,” she corrects primly after affording a glance over to his lines in the dirt.

“Not if you marry me.”

“Archibald Andrews,” she says as sternly as she can, the same way her mother says her own name when she’s found the cookie jar empty again. “Why would I marry you?”

“So we can hang out like this, here, forever!” he responds, laughing like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Betty frowns. “But I don’t want to hang out like this forever. I want to go where the clouds are going,” she admits, reaching out her hands to the sky, to the air above her. “I want to see stuff. Like the tundra, and dolphins, and flowers-”

“You’ve seen flowers,” Archie argues, voice indignant and full of affront. “There are flowers everywhere. Look,” he says, swiping at the grass and the flowers woven into the strands, “they’re right here.”

He’s not wrong, but – “I want to see different flowers.”

“They’re all the same.”

“No they’re not,” she corrects, but she does it gently because Archie never likes being told that she doesn’t want to marry him. She thinks it goes along with his sore-loser mentality. “Some flowers are really small and some are huge. Their petals are different colors. Don’t you want to see that?”

Archie frowns and turns himself onto his back again, staring up at the sky she knows he doesn’t quite understand her fascination with. “I guess so,” he says eventually, but she’s not convinced. “After you see the flowers, then will you marry me?”

She rolls her eyes, but only so the sky can see her. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Why not?”

“Because aren’t you supposed to be in love with someone if you’re going to marry them?”

“Well,” Archie says, searching. Logic has never been her best friend’s strong suit. “I _could_ be in love with you.”

She’s seven, but she knows that’s not enough. It may be good enough for Archie, but it’s not good enough for her.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asks seriously. Polly’s told her that when people are in love, they kiss, so she figures that if Archie _could_ love her, he _might_ want to kiss her.

“Not really,” he says while scrunching up his nose, and it doesn’t hurt her feelings because she doesn’t want to kiss him either.

She loves Archie the way she loves Polly. She wants Archie in her life, always and forever, and running through the fields is her favorite thing to do with him. Or really with anyone, for that matter.

But she doesn’t want to kiss him.

 _Maybe_ , she concedes _, maybe that will change one day_. Because right now, she doesn’t really want to kiss anybody and the thought of it scares her a little.

 _Kissing_ – it’s all so grown up. But she knows that one day, she’ll be grown up, too, and maybe then she’ll want to kiss Archie. Maybe then, she’ll fall into some kind of deep, romantic love with him instead of just plain old loving him, and she’ll eat the words she’s saying now.

“It’s going to rain,” she says, pushing herself up off the dirt and shaking out the wildflower stems that nested there. The sky doesn’t look it yet, but she can smell it in the air. “Come on.”

She offers her hand to Archie, and if anyone else were here, she knows he wouldn’t take it because god forbid anyone should see a girl helping up the great Archie Andrews. But, it’s just them today, and so his hand slides firmly against hers as she draws him to his feet.

“Your dress is gross,” he notes. “Your mom’s gonna be mad.”

He isn’t wrong, because Alice Cooper had deliberately told her to _‘for once, act ladylike, Elizabeth – just keep your skirt down and dirt off it,’_ before she’d left for Archie’s, and she’s about to slink through the kitchen door and likely be caught wearing proof of her disobedience. “Maybe the rain will wash it out,” she says, but even she knows that’s simply wishful thinking on her part. “Race you home?”

It starts raining as they hop the fence guarding the field, and even with the added weight of her drenched dress and heavy ponytail, she’s still faster than him.

 

* * *

 

**_Twenty-Seven._ **

It’s a slow night.

Rarely is there a night where it isn’t.

But tonight, it’s especially so.

She’s leaning against the bar top, the heel of her hand propped under her chin, and her elbow pressed into the formica as she stares directly and deliberately at the old bell hanging over the door. There’s a customer sitting near the back – a single, lonely customer, painstakingly picking apart his slice of pie, lifting each crumble of pastry flake to his mouth slowly – so slowly, like he hasn’t tasted anything quite like it before.

And she knows he has.

He’s in here every other night doing exactly this.

But she figures that her staring daggers at him now isn’t the preferred practice outlined in Pop’s employee handbook, so when she feels his eyes on her, she makes sure she smiles even though she isn’t looking at him.

But more importantly, she thinks, the great, obnoxious pie savorer isn’t just her last customer of the night; he’s Mr. Malloy.

He’s _John_ Malloy.

He’s Jinx’s dad – he’s the man who’d handed her an apple juice box before driving her home every third week from soccer practice in second grade; the Elm Street Carpool they’d called themselves, while high-fiving each other in their mom jeans and dad-hats, a mundane, uncreative name that had drawn her cringe at even the ripe-old-age of eight. He’s the man who plays golf with her dad once every year over the summer, never more, never less, even though they always promise each other more.

John Malloy knows exactly who she is, and he knows exactly who to tell if she so much at looks at him the wrong way now.

Alice and Hal Cooper.

Pop.

The rest of the town.

So when he looks up at her, all she can do is smile widely and ask if tonight’s the night he’s going to go for another slice.

He’s all set with the one, _but thanks very much_ , she’s told.

Betty busies herself with the vase of daisies on the counter, pulling up the shorter stems that have fallen over the course of the day in an effort to give the man what little privacy she can. He’s sitting at the far booth in the back for a reason. And, he’s here tonight for a reason, too.

No one ever comes into Pop’s past ten if they’re perfectly happy. There’s always a reason.

She does her best not to wonder too much at what it might be, but from the whispers and rumors she’s heard around town, it’s more than enough to hazard a guess.

Marriage troubles. Fighting.

_Divorce._

Betty turns her attention back to the flowers woven between her fingers. The stems are wilting, but just barely, and likely imperceptibly to anyone else. She wonders sometimes why she even bothers buying or arranging them – she doesn’t know that anyone who ventures into Pop’s especially cares for her efforts or even notices them. But Pop does; she’s seen how the flowers make him smile.

And, they make her smile, too, and that’s more than enough.

She reminds herself to pick up a new bunch before her shift tomorrow.

“You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Huh?” Betty draws her hand away from her mason jar and down to her side, wincing as it knocks loudly against the edge.

“You’re sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself?”

“Oh!” she says, shaking her head quickly in an effort to mask the fact she hadn’t at all noticed the older man in front of her.  “I’ll be fine. Honestly, no one ever comes in past midnight.”

“If you say so.”

Betty grins as brightly and widely as she can, feeling the tiredness already wavering against the corners of her mouth. “I’m saying so, Mr. Malloy.”

There’s the perennially uncomfortable exchange of dollar bills and cents – she doesn’t know at what point the adorableness of her holding out her hand at lemonade stands and bake sales faded away – but gone are the days where her friends’ parents look at her with endearing, affectionate eyes when she passes over the check.

Now, they toss over their bills without saying a word and forever and always with averted eyes.

“Have a good night, Betty,” John Malloy says, quickly pocketing his change as if she hadn’t just counted it out and slid it back over to him. “Don’t work too hard.”

She promises that she won’t.

As the door swings open, Betty inhales deeply and smiles.

She loves the smell of rain budding on the horizon.

Then, slowly, the door falls shut and she’s left with nothing but the low buzz of the neon lights to keep her company through the night.

 

* * *

 

When the chime of the bell becomes nothing more than a mere echo, Betty retreats to the bathroom and stands with her feet squared in front of her, facing the mirror. She doesn’t do this often and definitely not during hours where someone might walk in on her, but that’s not a danger she’s worried about right now.

She gives her ponytail a tug on either side, bringing it up firmly on her head and pulls at the skin across her cheeks towards her ears. She’s lucky she has her mother’s skin; it’s still dewy and soft enough to the touch, even after standing over a hot stove for the better part of her days.

But all that luck does precious little to save the rest of her. She looks worn down and tired to the bone, and even the bright yellow of her uniform does nothing in the way of lifting the weariness from her eyes.

Betty sighs, and with a decisive spin of her skirt, leaves the mirror behind her.

She looks how she looks and there’s isn’t much she can do about that.

But, there are other things that she still can do something about.

_Refill the ketchup bottles._

_Wipe down the tabletops._

_Fold the napkins._

But, that’s all easily done in an hour, half of one even, if she’s working at it.

Betty looks around the diner quickly, feeling the end of her ponytail swing and brush against her shoulder blades. She does it out of habit more so than anything else because she knows it’s just her here tonight holding the fort down.

But only then, after she’s sure, after she’s _really_ sure, does she allow herself to flop down on one of the booth’s vinyl benches.

Her legs dangle over the side and swing against the baseboards. The soles of her shoes brush against the tile.

There’s a single crack, loud and sharp, cutting through the steady still of the night, a heartbeat of a pause, the crescendo of the storm, growing and building as it swells through the silence.

Overhead, she watches the fan spin, tracking the blade with the ding near the outer edge as it circles endlessly around. She’d set it on low earlier – it’s still relatively cool out even with summer whispering it promises to settle in soon – but it’s also just warm enough to broach uncomfortable without the helping hand of the added breeze.

And, there’s that part of her that likes the low, humming whirr overhead. It’s about all she has to keep her company on slow nights like these – the neon lights, the rain, the fan.

The sounds.

When she feels the tell-tale signs of dizziness set in – watering, heavy eyes, and a slow pressure building at her temples – she presses her eyes shut firmly and waits for the feeling to fall away. And it does soon enough, but there’s something she can’t quite put her finger on that always remains.

 _This is your life, Betty Cooper_ , she thinks when she opens her eyes again.

And really, it’s not so bad.

 

* * *

 

A rumble wakes her.

It’s a loud, jarring sound that snaps her eyes wide open and jerks her awake. For a moment, she’s reminded of the thunderstorms over the plains that used to carry her home, the ones that chased and licked at her bare feet as she tried with every ounce of energy she had in her to outrun them.

There’s a violence to the way the unfamiliar sound cuts through the steady patter of rain, like a piece of paper ripping in a silent room, like a gunshot ringing through the night. It’s all-consuming. It draws every ounce of her attention, and it pulls her unceremoniously into absolute wakefulness.

But in a way, the rumble is melodic, too. There’s a rise and fall to the sound growing closer by the second – a steady rev tuning up, almost as if she’d turned up the dial on the radio sitting on the countertop next to the pie displays, followed by the release and sigh of the sound as it winds back down. She can feel it vibrating through the undercurrents of the ground, all the way through her worn shoe soles, building up through her legs, and coming to settle around the curves of her heart.

Against the vinyl bench, her fingers move, bouncing gently on the seat like popcorn kernels jumping from a heated pan.

Betty props herself up on her elbows, careful to lean her head away from the bottom edge of the tabletop – she’s suffered enough bruises across her forehead to have learned that lesson many times over by now. She squints at the window, filtering out the neon red light from the corners of her eyes and focusing only on the dark road beyond it.

She doesn’t see it at first, because he comes in like the night; suddenly, after the blacks and blues of falling darkness have bled into clouds of pinks and purples, and completely, because he’s there where he hadn’t been before, shaking the whole diner car off its ancient, creaking foundations.

But when she sees it, she wonders how she’d missed it before.

There’s a bike tearing down the empty road, slowing steadily as it draws closer to the neon radius of Pop’s warm and waiting embrace. And there’s someone on it.

Betty scrambles upright quickly. Her feet skid on the linoleum as she leaps her way across the diner to the bar for a better view; she can’t see jack from the booth and right now, she’d like to have a decent view of the action.

Even in the darkness, she thinks there’s a fascinating elegance to the rider’s movements, a gracefulness she hadn’t at all expected to come from someone like him while commanding something heavy and hulking like that. He moves with the elements and the world around him, crouching low with the heavy beat of the rain against his back and swaying in time with the bike’s gentle leans and swoops as he twists and turns towards the diner’s parking lot.

And for a moment, she’s inundated with jealousy because she knows what it’s like to move with the wind. She knows exactly what it feels like to have it pushing sharply against her face as she forges ahead of it, she knows the feeling of her feet changing the malleable earth beneath her.

It’s an exquisite feeling and it’s a powerful one.

It’s nothing short of that.

But she hasn’t felt that feeling in a while now, years even, and here he is, swirling up the night and its silence, tumbling and crashing through it, breaking into the darkness with the swing of his headlights across the empty parking lot like daybreak over the horizon.

 _How nice for him,_ she thinks.

He guides his bike to the empty spot next to where she’d parked for the night and if she had a moment more, she thinks she’d like to study the juxtaposition of him and her coming to life through their vehicles standing side by side. There’s the narrowness of his two-wheel drive paired off against her four, his black and chrome versus her bright baby blue. His modern and her vintage, his personality, her preferences.

Him compared to her.

 _Yes,_ she thinks, _there’s a lot to unpack there._

But he’s pulling off his helmet now and brushing a wayward curl of hair from his eyes, and she realizes in a quick wash of unease that she’s never actually had someone she doesn’t know come into the diner this late before.

And while she’s alone, too.

He reaches out a hand to the door, laying his palm flat against it.

Betty wonders if it’s a trick of the eye or the remnants of sleep still hanging over her, but she thinks she might just have seen him hesitate.

The bell overhead chimes as he pushes it open.

 

* * *

 

The last thought she has before he steps over the threshold, the sleeves of his jacket dripping rainwater all over the floors she’d just back-breakingly mopped hours ago, is that he may be trying to kill her and make off with the twenty-three dollars and sixty-six cents in the register.

 _They keep tabs here,_ she thinks about blurting out loud frantically. _There’s never more than a cool fifty in cash at Pop’s, so if that’s his endgame he’d be much better served trying the next town over._

_He can be Greendale’s problem, not hers._

“What do you want?” Betty asks firmly, inching her hand as inconspicuously as possible towards the pie server to her right. The thing isn’t that sharp – it barely cuts through softened apples in the pie as it is – but there’s a serrated edge and if she goes right for the jugular, she might have just enough time to hop the counter, sprint from the diner, and scream for help.

_But scream to who?_

The town’s collective bedtime has come and gone at least an hour ago.

But she holds off on screaming and running for the plains when he turns to her, a strand of his unkempt, dark hair falling across his forehead as he does.

“Maybe a better greeting than that?”

But he doesn’t so much as move even an inch closer to her, waiting, she thinks, for her permission to do so.

“Sorry,” Betty concedes, removing her fist from its death grip around the pie server. “We normally don’t get that many people in here at... midnight.” Her eyes tip up to the clock on the wall, the very same one ticking down the minutes and seconds to nothing but the end of her shift.

He shrugs. “I figured. Coffee?”

It takes her a minute to find her voice, so she nods and settles on a gesture to fill the silence, sweeping her hand out to the empty space and empty seats. “Anywhere you’d like.”

There’s still plenty of coffee, but it had also been light out the last time she’d brewed a fresh pot; this town and late-night coffee drinkers aren’t exactly a one-to-one. But he’s just ridden through the rain and her greeting had been less than hospitable, so she switches out the old pot with a fresh one and replaces the filter.

“Oh my god,” Betty says, words jumbling together as one hand flies quickly across her heart when she turns back around.

Of course he’s picked the barstool right across from her.

There’s a quick quirk at the corner of his mouth that has her thinking that he might’ve been holding back a laugh entirely at her expense. “You don’t meet new people often, do you?” he asks, drumming his fingers against the countertop.

Betty shrugs, just barely lifting her shoulders, but he isn’t wrong. She _doesn’t_ meet new people often, and not necessarily by choice, either.

It’s more circumstance than anything else – there’s simply no one new here _to_ meet because they’ve all known her longer than she’s known herself. She’s known everyone in town her entire life, just as they’ve known her for hers.

“What tipped you off?”

“Well, there’s the pie server,” he says easily.

The tips of her ears start heating up and the back of her neck grows clammy under her uniform’s thick, starched collar. “Oh,” Betty says, searching for the right words. “I... didn’t know you saw that.”

They’re not great words, but they’ll do.

“Yeah. Which was a mistake, by the way. You should’ve gone with the coffee pot.”

“I should’ve gone with the coffee pot for what?”

“Self-defense, general murder, whatever you were trying to do with that thing,” he says, tipping his head towards her right. “I would’ve been out cold on the floor with one good smack over the head from the coffee pot. The pie server though – you need to get much closer than arm’s length and put some real weight behind it to have any effect at all.”

She thinks she should be apprehensive and put on-guard because here he is, a perfect stranger giving her tips on _‘general murder,’_ and so blithely, too, like he’s reciting a grocery list.

 _Apples, oranges, coffee pot whipped over the head to cause certain death, milk_.

But there’s such an ease in the way he speaks, and something like kindness in the way he’s approaching her, if not a misplaced sort of amusement at the enigma that she most definitely is not that’s enough to keep her guard down.

Because she doesn’t like anyone second-guessing her strength, even this perfect stranger in front of her, she squares her shoulders and draws her hands to either hip in preparation to fire back. “So is this a thing you do? Underestimate everyone you meet?” Betty asks. “Give out tips on what did you call it – _general murder_ – to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you cross paths with?”

“Hey, I didn’t say you couldn’t take me.” Both his hands rise in defense. “I mean, you’re not contending with a lot. And no,” he says. “Just you, apparently.”

“Well, you might want to rethink that approach to meeting someone,” she says knowingly. “Some might call it off-putting.”

“Some might say that about the pie server, too.”

 _Well played,_ she’ll begrudge him that. So she barks up another tree.

“You know they say you can tell a lot about a person based on where they sit in a diner.”

“I’ve never heard that one before and trust me, I’ve been in my fair share of diners.”

“Mmm,” she hums in a response she’s fully aware is neither here nor there.

“Well,” he ventures. “What does the barstool say about me?”

“You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

She takes her time in observing him across from her, but for all her careful study, she doesn’t make it far past his face. It’s a perfectly good one, sharp at his jawline and a little angular, but softened by his eyes and the way they look at her with kindness, and maybe even amusement.

“By the way,” he interjects, nodding at the flowers next to the register, “those are dying.”

The hand she had tucked under her chin falls loudly to her side.

_Maybe it’s not that good a face after all._

_It’s a little smug,_ if she’s being honest. _And a little too sharp._

“I’m aware,” Betty snaps back.

“I was just – sorry,” he says, voice slow in confusion, and immediately she regrets how quick she had been to defend herself. “I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

Betty allows her eyes to flutter shut for a moment, the groan she wants to voice now so clearly filling the spaces in her head. “You weren’t,” she relents. “I’m in charge of these. I didn’t think anyone noticed how bad they looked.”

“Hey,” hey says gently. “I didn’t say they looked bad. Just… you know, a little droopy.”

“Isn’t that implied?”

“That the flowers look bad? Not at all. They’re still pretty.”

He’s looking at her with bright eyes – bright eyes that are admittedly a little tired, but bright all the same.

She takes that as his peace offering and gives hers in return. “You’re looking for conversation,” she says.

That isn’t what she really wants to say to him, nor is it what she’s honestly thinking, but it’s as true as anything else.

“What?”

“Your seat,” Betty explains. “That’s what it means. You’re sitting at the bar because you’re looking for conversation.

“Or maybe because I want to be left alone.”

“Maybe,” she concedes, shrugging off the challenge he’s looking at her with. “But you don’t. You’re looking for conversation, and you wouldn’t even mind it if it came from the only waitress in this joint.”

She doesn’t need to look over at him cradling his empty coffee cup in the circle of his wet arms to know that he’s considering her every move, watching each flick of her wrist and flutter of her fingertips.

“No,” he says eventually over the low hum of the radio. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

 

* * *

 

When she hears the stream of coffee drip and tick into the empty pot, she sets a cup and saucer in front of him.

“Are you just passing through?” she asks, trying to keep her voice as level as possible.

“Hopefully not,” he says. “So if you have directions to the nearest hotel, I’d really appreciate it.”

“We have a motel,” Betty instructs. “It’s not far – two lefts and a right when you drive out of here. You can’t miss it, the sign is the biggest thing we have in town.” Which is something she’d always found sweet given the name’s origins.

“Does the only motel in town have a name?”

“Ethel’s Place.”

He snorts. “Sounds seedy.”

“Hey,” she cuts in quickly. “I happen to know that it’s not.”

Technically, she knows no such thing since she’s never even seen the inside of any room at Ethel’s dad’s three-in-one motel-hostel-bed-and-breakfast – it’s not like she’s ever needed to stay there. But she’s known Ethel since her sandbox days, literally, she knows the Muggs family, and she knows that they’re not seedy people. She’s sure their motel isn’t seedy, either.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender. Then – “do _you_ have a name?”

“Do you?” That isn’t completely fair, Betty admits, because she’d just asked him a question and now it’s her turn to answer. But he shrugs over at her and she figures that means he doesn’t mind being the one to answer first again.

“Jughead.”

“Right, and I’m Princess Grace of Monaco,” Betty throws back with an added laugh, but when his eyes quickly shoot down to the empty cup, her grand show of mirth and mocking dies in her throat. “Oh shit, you’re ser– I am so, _so_ sorry,” she rushes out as her hands flail in meaningless, empty gestures. In her right, the coffee sloshes noisily. “I just – I’ve never met someone with your name before. Everyone in this town has the most boring ones like Fred and Hal; I never, _ever_ would’ve said that if I thought that was actually your name. It’s actually very unique, come to think of it, and I-”

“Relax,” he says, reaching over for the coffee pot in her hand and helping himself. _No milk, no sugar._ “You think I don’t get this all the time with a name like that?”

 _No_ , she thinks, it’s probably an all too common occurrence. But still, she shouldn’t have been so quick to poke fun. It could be a family name, maybe something with a long, revered history. It could have great significance that she is in no way privy to, it could’ve once belonged to a decorated war hero or pioneering scientist, so who the hell is she to pass judgment?

“I used to have ears that stuck out more or less sideways on my head,” he explains. “And I was a – how should I say this – _rotund_ toddler, hence the nickname.”

So much for great significance.

“And you kept it?” Betty asks as politely as she can, but with the way he’s smirking at her, she doesn’t think any of her attempts at casualness are landing at all. “I just meant that your ears don’t stick out anymore, and you’re definitely not rotund. You could probably use a couple of Pop’s burgers, to be honest.”

Her face is flaming by the end of her ramble; it feels hotter than it would be after standing over the industrial-sized griddle and flipping pancakes for the morning rush. She’d only been looking because he’d pointed it out in the first place, but now he’s looking at her like she’s been ogling him since he walked through the diner’s door.

Which she hasn’t been.

She’s been looking intently, but she hasn’t been ogling – there’s a difference.

“I have a complicated relationship with the real thing,” he says, and curtly enough that she doesn’t think she should press with any kind of follow up. “So, should I just keep calling you Princess Grace or-”

“Betty,” she says, hands drawing down hem of her apron. “My name is Betty.”

“Huh,” he says, nodding slowly. “Unexpected.”

She frowns, pulling up a stack of unfolded napkins from under the counter. “What’s wrong with Betty?”

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s nice. It’s just… it’s very traditional.”

“A euphemism for dated.”

He lifts his folded hands slightly before letting them fall back to the table. “Your words, not mine.”

“You’re not wrong in thinking that,” she says. “Look around you – everything here is past its time.”

“But you’re not,” he tells her, and with so much sincerity that she pauses.

There’s honesty in his voice, and a trueness that’s almost emphatic. This man doesn’t know her from Adam, but this – _this about her,_ he really believes – she can tell.

Betty only notices that her hands have stilled while folding the napkins under her palms when he tugs away half from her and resumes transforming the squares into triangles.

“You don’t have to do that,” Betty says quickly, but his elbow paperweights the stack he’s saddled himself with firmly.

“I don’t mind,” he says, trailing off because he seems to know as well as she does that there are always a million and one little things one could do in a diner, if only one wanted to. “I’m sure you have other things you could be doing.”

But it’s the way he folds – aimlessly and extremely practiced – the points of the square coming together in perfect diagonals each time under deft fingers with his gaze faraway from the mindless work under his hands that has her thinking that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.

“Go do your thing,” he encourages gently. “I can handle these.”

There isn’t much she wants to do right now except watch him and mold some kind of opinion on him. She gathers the ketchup bottles from around the diner and lines them up in front of her like soldiers marching to war in the third booth on the left – the one booth with the best view of the bar if she sits at just about a thirty-three degree angle.

She watches him in her peripheries, and she finds him doing the same.

 

* * *

 

“Refill?” she asks after she’s slid the squeeze bottles back into place at the end of each table.

He passes his neatly folded stack of napkins across to her in exchange. “Why not?”

“You’re a night person,” Betty surmises. His cup is teetering near half empty, and with a nearly full pot in her hand, it’ll take just about two and a half seconds to fill it.

_One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thou-_

It isn’t much of a victory, but it doesn’t stop the buzz that comes from being right.

“I’m a night person by default,” he tells her. “It’s when I do most of my work. By the way, someone left a book over there.”

“Oh,” she says, quickly striding over to the far end of the counter and snatching it back up. It’s no secret that she does, but _technically_ she shouldn’t really be reading while clocked in, not that this man across from her would know or care. _Pop_ doesn’t even care. “It’s mine.”

“Let’s see it,” he says, swiveling his seat towards her. She glances down at the page number, marking it in her mind before sliding it across the bar top.

He stops the book’s near crash into his coffee with his pinky finger. _“Endless Night.”_

She watches his reaction carefully as he picks up the paperback and turns it over in his hands, though there isn’t much to watch; a slight raise of his eyebrows and a fleeting tug of his lip upward, before – “did you know Christie took the title from a Blake poem?”

She had _not_ known that.

She also hadn’t expected _him_ to know something like that.

“Really,” Betty says, and it’s not so much a question as it is a challenge.

“Mmm hmm,” he hums. “I don’t remember the name of the poem, though.’”

She spends the time she should be using to mull over the title mulling him over instead. She hadn’t expected that comment – he doesn’t strike her as the type that takes much of an interest in books, let alone the origins of some obscure Agatha Christie paperback she’d found in the neighbor’s yard sale.

But she supposes that, like everything else she’s learned about him so far, he isn’t quite what he seems.

Then again, he could’ve made the entire thing up.

“Do you like it so far?” he asks.

“I’ve read it over a dozen times.”

“Then you must have a lot to say about it.”

She looks at him then for any indication of mocking or insincerity, but it isn’t there for her to find. She doesn’t know if that’s surprising to her.

“It’s different than her other novels,” Betty begins slowly, and it takes her a while to find the words and her voice because it’s been a beat since she’s done this. She can’t remember the last time someone, at least anyone besides her mother, asked her opinion on anything, and that was only if steak or chicken was the better choice for Sunday dinner. And, she’s sure the last time anyone asked for her opinion on literature was back in high school.

For a letter grade, no less.

“How so?” he asks.

“It’s the characters,” she tells him. “You wouldn’t find anyone from this book on the Orient Express and I like that about it. Michael is no one and nobody; he’s not your typical Poirot-type.”

“You don’t like Poirot?” he guesses.

“Not at all. He’s got a stick shoved way too far up his own ass. And, too much mustache. It’s entirely untrustworthy.”

He laughs loudly at her colorfulness, hand slapping down hard on the bar top, and a smile breaking widely across his face. It makes her laugh too, not because she thought she’d been particularly funny – it’s her honest to god opinion – but because there’s something in her, something not at all unlike giddiness that comes from knowing her opinion meant something to someone.

Someone understood it enough to actually laugh.

“You don’t think you’re being too hard on Poirot?” he asks, remnants of laughter still dancing in his voice as he slides the book back over to her. “Michael killed three women for just money – he was a Macbethian son of a bitch. And a psychopath.”

“You’ve read this?” Betty asks, voice doubtful as she inches the book back her way.

No one’s ever read it, not even Archie and she’s been asking him to read it for years on end.

His eyebrows raise as he leans forward over the countertop, and she knows then exactly what his answer will be. “Over a dozen times,” he echoes back. “It helps me with my work.”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“Please.” He scoffs through a sip of coffee and with his free hand, gestures himself up and down. “We’ve gone over this – does it I look like I could pull off being a cop?”

 _No,_ Betty admits. She’s sure there are cops out there with his frame and build, but as it is, he’s on the slender side.

“Well, what are you?”

“I write mystery novels.”

“No you don’t.”

“That’s twice now you haven’t believed me,” he says. “You underestimate me a hell of a lot for someone who doesn’t like being underestimated herself.”

“I’m – I’m sorry,” Betty stammers, because even if she doesn’t believe him, she’s been raised to use more polite means and ways to approach disingenuousness and dishonesty. “I just – well, really? _You_ write mystery novels?”

“You got me,” he concedes, and she breathes out a satisfied sigh.

_He’s a bullshitter._

That line about the Blake poem had probably been a crock of shit, too.

Then – “it’s really just novel, singular. I’m working on the second now.”

_Oh._

“But you wrote a book,” Betty clarifies, wishing she could shake the dumb out of her voice. “Like, a real, paper book, cover and everything, kind of book?”

“Cover and everything,” he repeats, his slight smile betraying what she thinks might be pride. “That kind of book.”

In that moment, she’s inexplicably jealous once again of this complete stranger and his one book, cover and everything. It might be three hundred pages of drivel, but it’s real. It’s tangible. It’s out there in the world and for the world, with his extremely odd name plastered over the front cover in twenty-four-point font, and it’s no one else’s but _his_.

What’s hers is a diner gig, a graveyard shift, and a uniform that makes her look like a canary.

“You okay?” she hears him ask, and she starts out of her own thoughts, her hand stilling from turning endless circles with the dishcloth on the counter.

“Just fine,” she brushes off. “So is that what you’re doing here, then? Writing it?”

“Hopefully.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he starts slowly, corner of his mouth quirking. “I like to eat and this gives me the money to do that.”

“No, not that,” Betty corrects gently. “I meant why here?”

“Why not here?”

She raises one eyebrow at him.

“I was looking for a small town,” he admits. “This fits the bill as well as anything else.”

“But why this town specifically?” Betty prods. “There have to be a million other small towns that are just as sleepy and unremarkable as this one.”

“I can tell you like it here.”

She shrugs. “I’ve lived here my entire life.”

“I can tell you like it here,” he repeats. Betty doesn’t know what more she can say, so she keeps her mouth shut. Silence, she’s learned long ago, can be just as great a conversation starter as a question.

“There was that sign,” he admits eventually. “The one next to the sign with your town’s name on it. I saw it when I drove in. It was the only thing I saw, actually.”

“What, the ‘Nowhere’ sign?”

“Mmm hmm.”

She’s known that sign her entire life – those seven mocking letters, hand painted on a two-by-four and nailed to an old wooden post. Her parents hadn’t, so deductive reasoning leads her to think that someone between her and her parents age had planted it there one sleepy night, maybe as a prank or maybe as some sort of grand statement.

Maybe all of the above.

It’s a little derogatory, she thinks, but for all the divisiveness it’s caused in her town’s history – all the inane town hall meetings about what in the goddamn world they should do about the sign, tear it down or leave it up, paint over it, or let it be – the Nowhere sign has remained throughout her twenty-seven years. There’s a part of her that thinks it’s stood there outlasting the test of time because on some level, the whole town, subconsciously or otherwise, agrees with it.

For better or worse they _are_ nowhere, and they always have been.

“So nowhere is where you want to be?” she asks.

“Nowhere is exactly where I want to be.”

“Why?”

He waits until she’s looking straight at him before answering. “I’ve never been nowhere before,” he tells her. “And I wanted to see what was here.”

 

* * *

 

She asks if he’d like a third refill, but he declines.

“How much for the coffee?” he ventures instead.

“Oh,” she says, looking at the sad, crumpled wad of dollar bills he unearths from his pockets. She should take it, she thinks, there’s no reason in the world for her not to take it.

Except that at Pop’s, they routinely let cups of coffee slide, regular customer or not, and especially for a wayward soul traveling through the night in the rain.

Betty nudges the money he’s slid over to her back across the countertop.

 _It’s what Pop would do,_ she thinks. _It’s what Pop would_ want her _to do._

“It’s on the house,” she tells him. “As a thank you for helping fold the napkins.”

”Oh. Well, thanks,” he says, shoving a few dollars into the tip jar before pocketing the change. “I would’ve done that for free.”

“And now you tell me.”

She watches as he wrestles his jacket back on, holding back a grimace at the puddle it leaves on the barstool; in her opinion, there’s very little in this world more uncomfortable than wet clothes.

She hadn’t noticed it when he’d first walked in, but she does now as the jacket settles back over his shoulders – it’s hard for her to miss. With the fistful of empty space under his shoulders and the extra leather that falls too far past his waist, his jacket, she realizes, is just slightly too large on him.

But all her musings about fits and fabric evaporate when he reaches for his bag on the ground, revealing the image of a hissing, angry looking snake coiled into a _S_ emblazoned onto the back of his jacket, and two words she reminds herself to look up later – Southside Serpents.

It likely isn’t at all related, but as it is, the words reminds her of the game Dagwood can’t stop harping on and on about, the one that she doesn’t understand at all, no matter how many times he’s explained to her.

Dungeons and Dingbats?

 _Dragons_ , Betty reminds herself – not dingbats. _Dragons_.

She isn’t the betting type, but she has a feeling the jacket might not be his.

She wonders who it might belong to.

“So is Pop a real person?” he asks, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Or is he just a metaphorical figure head?”

“What, like Wendy or the Chicken Colonel?” she clarifies, shaking herself out of her trance.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Pop’s as real as it gets. That’s him over there,” she tells him, pointing to faded black and white picture tacked onto the wall.

 _He’s the curious type_ , she thinks as he purposefully strides over to the photo and crouches to examine it.

“Which one is Pop?” he asks.

There’s a beat before she answers. “The baby.”

He hums softly and nods, eyes narrowed in careful concentration. “So if this is baby Pop and Pop’s-the-diner was clearly already up and running before the baby was born, how did the diner get its name?”

It takes her a second to get her throat working again because she hadn’t thought _that_ would be the question to come out of his mouth, but she has the answer to this, too. It’s a question she’s asked Pop before herself while staring at that very same picture.

“See that guy there?” she asks, moving to stand beside him. “That’s Pop’s dad. He was the one who bought and started Pop’s. And get this – he also went by Pop.”

There’s a moment, so fleeting and brief that she wonders if she imagines it, that she thinks she sees his mouth pull down in a frown at the tidbit of information she’d shared about Pop. His eyes narrow, and his entire expression becomes a dead match for the storm that’d been swelling when he’d first driven into Pop’s.

But just as quickly as the moodiness crosses his face, it leaves, and he’s back to what she thinks is his regular self.

Somewhere in between smug and brooding.

Or the regular self she knows of him now, anyhow.

“Two Pop’s in one family,” he muses almost accusingly. But even so, she only catches the corners of his words.

 _He smells like rain,_ she thinks. _He smells like the rain and the outside._ She doesn’t know what she’d expected him to smell like, maybe cigarettes and alcohol given the whole bike and the leather get up, but it hadn’t been this.

He just smells like rain.

“Pop would’ve been here tonight, too,” she hears herself continuing quickly in what she hopes is a decent mask for the fact that she’d just been _smelling_ him. “I sent him home.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Betty stands up straight and takes a full step back from him. He’s dripped water on her arm, too, she realizes, and when she does, as inconspicuously as possible, she brushes it off. “Pop’s here before the sun rises every day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year,” she tells him. “I figured he could use a night off; he isn’t exactly young.”

“That was nice of you.”

Betty nods slowly at his words. Of course it was, because she’s nice and reliable Betty Cooper. That’s who her town knows her as and has always known her as; that’s simply who she is.

She’s nice.

“Anyone would’ve done the same,” she says with a quick shrug of her shoulders.

“And yet, you’re the only one here.”

So she is.

“So the motel – two lefts and a right?” he asks.

“You really have no idea where you are right now, do you?” she hears herself asking him. It’s such a completely fascinating concept to her, the fact that someone could wander into her little town – the town she knows better than the back of her hand – and find it intriguing enough to not blow right on by.

Her town is her town – hometown loyalty, hometown glory and all that.

But, the back of her hand has never been particularly interesting either.

“None,” he says back. “Why, should I?”

Betty shrugs, the stiff fabric of her starched uniform rustling with her as she does. “No,” she says. “I guess not.”

He looks at her then, and more intently than he’d been doing before. His eyes narrow slightly, likely imperceptibly so had she not been already studying them herself, and his head ever so gently tips to the side.

It’s almost uncomfortable, the weight of his gaze; it’s like he’s trying to understand her, down to the beats that underscore and drive her life, down to the rhythms that make her tick.

“Two lefts and a right,” she says eventually. “Ask for Mr. Muggs when you get there.”

She stops him when he’s halfway out the door. The chime of the bell this time around rings louder than it had when he’d first walked in – it’s stopped raining, she realizes, and the entire world around her feels absolutely and wholly still.

In this very moment, if someone told her that they were the only moving, breathing structures in the known universe, she’s sure she’d believe them.

“Jughead,” she calls.

He turns back to her expectant – surprised, even at the sound her voice catching and curving around the syllables of his name, the name that had fallen from her lips more easily than she’d thought it would.

“Yeah?”

“Welcome to Riverdale.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though a lesser-known meaning of it, the daisy symbolizes hope. 
> 
> Title and all future lyric-use from Tom Petty's "Wildflowers".
> 
> I'm on Tumblr! @heavy-lies-the-crown.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> "Lonesome Town" - Ricky Nelson


	2. Cornflower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to bugggghead for giving this such a thorough edit and for her fabulous insights!

 

Two lefts and a right later, he concedes that the waitress with the ponytail – _Betty_ – had been right.

The motel’s sign is bar none, the biggest thing he’s seen so far in this tiny, rinky-dink town.

It’s ironic, he thinks, for a likely empty motel in an empty town to have such an overbearing sign; it seems like a waste of space if he’s being honest, and an even bigger waste of money.

From the picture the waitress painted for him of Riverdale, to the way she reacted to him showing up at the diner at what he’d call an early hour anywhere else that didn’t hold itself up as a great contender for the sleepiest town in the continental United States, he’d hazard a guess that not many people drive through here.

And that even fewer people stay.

He holds back a laugh at the black block lettering set out beneath the neon lights.

_Nice clean rooms - best rates in town!_

He’s pretty sure that they’re the _only_ rates in town if he’s getting down to the nitty gritty.

The rain has stopped – he’d noticed its final, dying groans and then the whisper of a drizzle that morphed into nothing but wind while he’d been folding napkins. But even so, he’s still soaked to the bone from being chained to the open road for hours.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he reminds himself to thank JB for the waterproof duffle she’d all but pushed on him in a flurry of squealing and squawking that _“on planet earth it rains sometimes, Jug, and no one wants to get to know you that well while you’re waiting for your_ only _set of clothes to dry.”_

He’d thought it’d looked, stupid, frankly; but he admits to himself now that what would’ve really been stupid was him sitting around in wet clothes with nothing more than his pride and an inevitable onset of the flu to keep him company.

JB is going to get a kick out of this when he tells her it’d come in handy.

No one likes being right more than his sister.

He turns his bike into the motel’s lot and pulls into a spot halfway from the door – he’d seen Betty’s apprehension and wide doe-eyes even before he’d parked his bike, and he figures he’ll give this guy more of a chance to compose himself.

He breathes in deeply, filling his lungs to their utmost before exhaling. The air smells clean, he finds himself thinking; it’s without any hint of exhaust or smoke tainting its crisp sharpness. Then, there’s the perfume of rain that follows, so strong and almost intoxicating as it carries on an invisible train of breeze.

He’s smelled the rain before, countless times. But he doesn’t know that it’s ever smelled quite as good as it does now. There’s no muddiness to it, no murkiness - just the smell of something wholly pure and untainted.

 _Riverdale._ He turns the name over and over in his mind as he parses apart the syllables, the meaning.

Riverdale.

It’s a nice name. It’s slightly too bucolic for his taste, a little too evocative of some sunny, sweet little town hidden between undulating hills and valleys, surrounded by a clear and pristine river, and unsullied by the dirt and grime of the outside world - but still, a nice name just the same.

 _Riverdale_ , he repeats to himself again as he thinks back to the sign with the loopy blue script, masked with a sheen of rain he hadn’t even gotten the chance to read.

He wonders what else it’d said.

_Riverdale, home of the nuclear family - three kids and a golden retriever guaranteed!_

_Riverdale, home of wholesomeness and good old fashioned fun. Try our world famous malt shakes!_

_Riverdale, home of the American dream._

_It must be nice,_ he finds himself thinking, _to call a town like this home._

 

* * *

 

Jughead doesn’t expect to be greeted with a grin at the motel’s front desk, but he is. He’s rarely greeted with a grin anywhere he goes, and the fact that he is now is more than enough to put him on edge.

“Hi,” Jughead ventures carefully. “I’m-”

“Jughead.”

Instantly his shoulders tense and pull together.

He’d been poised to end his sentence with _‘looking for a room,’_ and not with his name. It isn’t information he likes to offer up without being the one to prompt it and even though the man in front of him is all smiles now, it still unnerves him.

“I didn’t mean to assume,” the older man continues, apologetic. “Betty called ahead. She told me that you might be on your way over.”

It’s a hidden word in the middle of the man’s sentence - _might_ \- that he finds himself latching onto. He’d told her - _Betty_ , he reminds himself, the waitress from the diner has a name and it’s Betty - he’d told her that he’d be staying for a while, and he’d asked her directions to the motel - twice, no less.

And yet, that had only earned him a _‘might_ be on his way.’

He doesn’t know much about this woman beyond her name and what she’s currently reading in her downtime, but he has a feeling that her doubtfulness, her _‘might,’_ has more to do with her than it does him.

Specifically, it _might_ have something to do with the fact that she still can’t quite believe that he or anyone else would want to stay in this town.

And if he’s being honest, there’s a part of him that can’t quite believe he wants to, either.

“Well,” Jughead says slowly for lack of anything better. The man across the desk is looking at him far too expectantly. “Here I am. You’re Mr. Muggs?”

 _Here I am,_ he thinks. What, is he seven years old and playing hide-and-seek?

“I am,” the older man says, reaching his hand across the desk. “It’s good to meet you, Jughead. And call me Manfred.”

“Manfred,” Jughead repeats back, cringing as he inadvertently separates out the syllables of the man’s name. What a hypocrite he is - he hates it when it’s done to his own name, and yet, here he is. “It’s, uh, nice. To meet you, too.”

One would think he’s never met anyone new before with the way he’s presenting himself now.

But for all his bumbling, Manfred Muggs doesn’t seem to mind. “I’m guessing you need a room?” the older man prods.

Jughead nods if only because he hasn’t been doing great with his words so far. “I’m hoping to stay for a bit, too,” he adds.

Manfred Muggs’ entire face turns even brighter than it had already been, his toothy grin breaking further across his face. Likely, Jughead thinks, at making a sale beyond _‘the cheapest room you have, and just for the night.’_

He wonders if smiling like that hurts one’s face at all because he thinks that it definitely must.

“How long are you planning on staying for?” Manfred asks.

 _A very good question,_ Jughead admits. _And one that he definitely should’ve thought through before this moment now._

“I don’t know,” he says, pushing at the groove between the curve of his nose and corner of his eye. It’s always been one of his nervous ticks. “A month? Two?” Manfred Muggs and his round, ever-smiling face looks back at him expectantly. “Two, then,” Jughead settles on.

He fights the urge to change his mind as he hands his credit card over.

 

* * *

 

There’s silence as Mr. Muggs runs his card through a manual machine that he thought, like the VCR and the floppy disk, had gone long ago to the graveyard of technologies past.

It’s a silence that Jughead thinks he’s supposed to fill. But as it is, he’s got nothing.

“How do you know Betty?” Manfred asks eventually.

“I don’t,” Jughead says, clearing his throat. “I was just at Pop’s before this. She gave me directions here.”

The man nods as he hands the card back carefully. “She’s a good kid; she always has been,” Manfred muses conversationally. “She’s been a good friend to my daughter.”

He thinks that _kid_ is in no way the right term in which to refer to the waitress who he’s sure is at least his age, but he figures to parents they’ll all always be children no matter how old they grow.

“She seems nice,” Jughead offers, and even though they’re the most nondescript, plain words he could think of, he still feels the tips of his ears heat. His beanie is stuffed into his jacket pocket, because as hard as he’s tried to make it work, there’s just no reconciling his hat and his helmet; it’s one or the other.

He knows he’d made the right decision given the rain, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing his hat was covering his ears now.

“I put you in a suite since you’re going to be with us for some time,” Manfred says, and when he holds out a set of keys attached to a large yellow tag, Jughead doesn’t know that he’s ever been so grateful for a change in subject. “Those have a bit more room.”

“Thank you,” Jughead responds. “I appreciate it.”

He takes a moment to examine the yellow tag and the inordinately hard-to-miss outline of a smiling face surrounded by large, barrel-curled ringlets, one that matches the larger one on the sign out front.

 _The famous Ethel,_ he thinks, amused as he pockets it.

“You have a good night,” Manfred tells him, pointing to a small console table tucked away in the far corner of the room. “We have breakfast set up over there in the mornings.”

“Thanks... Mr. Muggs,” Jughead says. He’s fully aware that he’s gotten the first-name go-ahead, and that it may even be preferred, but he’d learned long ago that with age comes respect and sometimes, even reverence.

Try as he might, he doesn’t have it in him to call this man just plain old Manfred.

Unlike he’d done earlier at the diner, he quickly swoops and gathers up his wet bag, grateful he’s at the end of his journey and done unstrapping and re-strapping the monster to his back seat.

“Hey,” Jughead starts cautiously at the door. _Is he supposed to say goodnight to this man? Is that too familiar?_ “You, uh, you wouldn’t happen to know Betty’s last name, would you? Just so I can thank her for the directions later.”

It’s a carefully constructed question because he knows that of course Manfred Muggs knows the last name of the woman who’s been pals with his daughter since childhood and who’d called over with the warning that the outsider atop the first motorcycle Riverdale has ever seen was on his way, no less.

But as carefully constructed as it is, and as nonchalantly as he tries to play it off, Jughead knows how plainly obvious he’d been.

“It’s Cooper,” Manfred tells him kindly. “She’s Betty Cooper.”

 

* * *

 

It’s nearing two by the time he’s flipping his pillow and himself around the bed; as it is, sleep never comes easily to him and even less so when there’s an unfamiliar bed and an unfamiliar room with all its unique creaks and groans to add into the equation. He’s exhausted - an entire day’s worth of journey riding through countless miles of unforgiving highway isn’t all that fun - but he knows himself.

He won’t be sleeping for at least a few more hours.

In hindsight, setting up shop and forking over three hard-earned thousand, also known as money he hasn’t technically even earned yet for a motel room without a moment’s hesitation might have been a touch on the completely impulsive side.

And a touch on the stupid side, too.

It’s not really like him to do something like this - as carefree and as rootless as his existence is, he still thinks through everything carefully.

Except, apparently, this.

 _It must be something in the water,_ he concedes. Or the coffee, or however that saying goes.

But there was that sign, and he’d been tired and cold and cranky from the rain, and just so ready to get off the road.

Nowhere.

And that had been the point – at the end of the day, it didn’t matter whatsoever where he set up camp because it’d all be the same. Riverdale, or the next town over, or the town two hours and thirty-seven minutes from here – it’d all be exactly the same. He’d be greeted by the same slowness, the same stillness, and the same mug with the same strong coffee to fill it.

But maybe, he admits, not the same girl from the diner.

He flips over onto his side and away from the night flooding through the cracks in the curtains.

Betty Cooper.

He doesn’t know what to make of her yet, except that she’s a bit of a contradiction wrapped up in a single person with a blonde ponytail holding it all in place.

She’s smart, he thinks, and she’s observant, but she’s shouldering the graveyard shift at a sleepytown diner, not that the two are mutually exclusive concepts. He knows a thing or two about that.

She likes reading, but she’s read the same book upwards of twelve times.

She’s sweet looking with a nice smile - she’s pretty, even - but she has a bite, too, and especially when she’s pushed the wrong way.

She’s clearly kind, but it’s a kindness that she guards carefully. He thinks it might even be one that needs to be earned.

Jughead flips onto his back and stares at the shadows the spinning fan draws across the popcorn ceiling. He doesn’t know all that much about architecture or home improvement, but he’s pretty sure that popcorn ceilings are relics of an era long gone.

He’s willing to concede now that Betty might’ve been right - that a whole lot, if not entirely everything in this town called Riverdale might be a little past its time.

 _But_ , he thinks, _he’d been right, too_.

He doesn’t think that wide sweeping statement applies to her.

Outside, he hears the rush of tires lapping against the rain covered streets. It’s a comforting sound - he’s used to more than just plain silence filling his nights.

He wonders if that car might be her heading home.

He wonders what her life is like.

He wonders what her story is.

 

* * *

 

He isn’t proud of it, but he sleeps until noon.

It’s a decent bed, made even more so after a seven hour ride in the rain, which is more than he can say for the lace curtains leaking in sunlight by the bucketful over the thin floral carpet.

In the light of day and with more than a few hours of sleep under his belt, he finally takes a moment to examine the motel room.

 _It’s nice enough,_ he thinks after scanning the space. It has everything he needs, really, and it’s definitely worlds better than a handful of other places he’s had to lay his head down before. With its plaid, salmon-colored bedspread and matching curtain set, the wooden box TV sitting pretty on a hulking dresser that he’s sure his grandmother owned at some point, too, the room is straight out of the sixties, a time capsule of a time past.

He takes his time getting ready. It’d been easy enough with the cover of night to swoop into this town quietly and relatively unnoticed, but he doubts the same will be true of the day waiting for him now. He doesn’t know much about towns like this, but he knows people, and he knows their tendency to talk.

And he’s just positive that beyond the safety of the motel’s pink, floral-printed wallpaper, they’re all talking about him.

It’s almost enough to make him want to take a stab at working the coffee machine sitting out on the desk and stay holed up in his room.

But he also doesn’t want to give the masses the satisfaction.

Jughead holds back a pained sigh and reaches for his father’s jacket hanging on the back of the desk chair, still slightly damp to the touch.

Then he pauses.

He likes having the jacket on his back when he’s on the road - it does a fine job of protecting him from flying rocks and all that - but he really has no reason to be wearing it out and about now. And especially since he’s sure that a monumental, hissing serpent branded on his back will only draw attention to him that he’d much rather avoid.

His hand falls to his side. _It’s better this way anyhow,_ he thinks.

Really, he hates that goddamn snake. It’s always made him uneasy.

Instead, he unearths his only other jacket from his duffel, a sherpa he’s held onto for years, and tugs his hat on over his head before pulling the door open.

He’s greeted with sunshine and quiet when he does. He’s used to the hustle and bustle right below his feet, to his world never standing still for even a moment, and to gray and grime.

But now it’s simply quiet and bright.

And it’s nice.

 

* * *

 

Jughead likens walking through Riverdale to stepping back fifty years in time while wading through a dense, fog-laden dream. There’s the odd person roaming the street and they all do double takes as his unfamiliar face and funny hat breezes past them, but otherwise, the town stands still and silent.

It’s almost as if he’s the only one moving through it and in a way, it reminds him of a ghost town. He half expects a tumbleweed to come rolling down the way at any moment.

But still - it’s a sunnier, brighter kind of ghost town.

There’s a street he wanders down that plays home to a handful of shops and an actual, bonafide general store anchoring the corner; and once he reaches the end of the road in a grand total of two minutes, he quickly realizes that it’s the one and only street in town with anything more than neatly trimmed trees and picket fences.

Hence the name _Main Street_ , he supposes.

Jughead considers meandering into the general store and poking around there, but he really has no need for anything, especially since he’s fresh out of three grand.

Instead, he makes his way over to the only thing in town he does recognize - a newspaper box - and pulls one off the untouched stack.

 _The Riverdale Register,_ he reads to himself. It’s a thin paper, tabloid size and no more than eight pages long, including an entire page dedicated to a maple syrup ad, but it’s a newspaper just the same and he’s always found comfort within their black and white pages.

He doesn’t want to be rude, nor would he ever voice any of this out loud to what he’s sure is a proud _Register_ readership, but it’s a pretty pathetic excuse for a newspaper, if not morbidly amusing.

_Mantle Cat Escapes Safely from Mason Tree._

But news is news, and it isn’t Riverdale’s fault that its beats are mundane.

But still, he thinks, tucking the thin paper back into the newspaper box - there has to be _something_ more interesting to write about, even in a town like this.

 

* * *

 

He finds himself wandering back to Pop’s.

The neon light that guided him there the night before is off now, but against the open sky, unencumbered save an errant cloud here and there, the large sign still beckons him there, the glass from the bulbs catching the sunlight and winking at him as he approaches the parking lot.

It’s packed this time, and with cars spilling over onto the grass on either side of the asphalt.

And that’s enough to draw a sigh because he knows full well what comes next.

_Narrowed eyes fixed right on him._

_Whispers about who the hell he is and what he wants._

_Laughter at the expense of his name and his hat._

But knowing what comes next, he’s learned long ago, doesn’t necessarily make any of it easier.

Jughead sucks in a large gulp of air and holds it firmly in his lungs as the bell chimes overhead.

 

* * *

 

Inside, it’s both exactly as he expects and nothing like it at all.

They whisper to each other, but only briefly before returning back to their plates.

They laugh, but not with jeering expressions and fingers pointed at his beanie.

They look, but more often than not, they end up smiling at him.

“Sorry,” he says, brushing back and knocking against the door as the blur of a faceless, fast-moving waitress nearly bumps into him, plates and all.

“Anywhere that’s open,” he’s told, and without so much as a glance.

As he looks around for an empty seat, he feels a little like he’s in high school again, trapped in a cafeteria and world that simply has no place for him. He feels like he’s back on the ugly couch at the trailer, holding his hands over his sister’s ears, and listening to his parents argue in the bedroom over the blare of cartoons, a conversation for two turned unwittingly to four.

He feels like he’s not supposed to be here.

 _It’s for the book_ , he tells himself, _and really, what artist hasn’t suffered for their craft at some point or another?_

Van Gogh cut off his damn ear.

He can deal with this.

“Hey, man,” Jughead hears, “over here.”

He tracks the voice to a man sitting at the bar with a shockingly red mop of hair and his shoulders twisted towards him, revealing an empty barstool.

“Thanks,” Jughead says quickly, crossing the diner in three long strides, hunching his shoulders into himself as he takes his seat. He hates the feeling of being watched and he knows that’s all anyone here is doing right now.

“So, you’re new,” the redhead says, grinning widely.

Jughead laughs, and genuinely, too. He’s always appreciated the humor found in simple honesty.

“Ronnie mentioned something about you this morning,” the redhead continues, reaching a hand over the countertop. “I’m Archie.”

He extends his hand, thinking absentmindedly that he can’t quite remember the last time he’d shook this many hands in so short a time frame. “Jughead,” he says.

“Ronnie didn’t mention that part.”

Archie folds his hands back neatly on the countertop, drumming his fingers absentmindedly, and it’s then that Jughead notices there’s a thin, gold band on Archie’s left hand, almost unnoticeable, camouflaged against his tanned skin.

 _Ronnie must be his husband_.

Jughead thinks the guy looks a little young to be married, and not even newly married given the faded gleam and scratches on the surface of his ring, but he’s not here to judge. The entire institution of marriage may be something of a joke to him, but even he’ll admit that the joke can suit some people very nicely.

“Where are you from?” Archie asks conversationally.

If there’s a question he hates more than _‘say, what’s your name?’_ it’s this one.

But Jughead shrugs and holds back a frown he feels tugging at his mouth at the question. “Wherever I last came from.”

“And where’s that?”

“Chicago,” he offers.

And before that Minneapolis, and before that Toledo.

And on and on and on.

Archie swivels to face him, eyes bright and full of excitement. “Nice, man. I went to college there.”

“Yeah? What did you think of it?”

“About Chicago or college?”

“Both?”

“College was so much fun,” Archie says, and with all the enthusiasm in the world. “And Chicago was chill for a while, too. But there was a lot going on in there. Honestly, almost too much.”

Jughead nods slowly. He knows cities. He knows their beats and rhythms, and he’s known that all his life. But even so, he doesn’t disagree with Archie.

“I’d imagine that anywhere would have a lot going on compared to here,” he offers.

“Yeah,” Archie agrees. “But Riverdale is home. And there’s just something about that, you know?”

He doesn’t, but he nods just the same.

“Have you met anyone yet?” Archie asks, and before Jughead has the chance to answer - “I should introduce you to the guys down at the site.”

“I met the waitress working here last night,” Jughead says in an attempt to defend himself.

“Oh, Betty!” Archie says, eyes popping open so widely that Jughead instinctively leans back in his seat. He hadn’t expected the concept of Betty Cooper, the waitress with the night shift at Pop’s, to elicit that level of excitement. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me, I’ve been sitting here for - hey, Betty! Come out here for a sec!” Archie calls towards the swinging doors leading to the kitchen.

She’s still here?

_“Betty!”_

“Arch, give me a minute!” she yells back. “It’s almost ready!”

_She’s still here._

“She works a lot,” Jughead comments, folding his left hand on top of his right on the countertop.

“Yeah,” Archie says through a half-laugh that Jughead thinks sounds almost derisive. “Betty never stops working.”

“But graveyard into lunch rush? Isn’t that exhausting?”

“You’d think, right?” Archie says, shrugging. “But she likes to stay busy.”

 _It isn’t arbitrary,_ Jughead realizes as he watches Archie’s fingers busily tapping to the beat - there’s a method to the movements he’s making, and a deliberateness to the way he curls and straightens his fingers to the beat of the song on the radio he can just barely hear over the chatter.

“You going to be in Riverdale long?” Archie asks.

Jughead sucks in a breath before answering, “Depends on your definition of long. Two months?”

Which sounds both incredibly stupid and long now that he’s admitting it out loud.

Archie whistles sharply. “Wow. I mean, no offense, but why?”

Right now, he’s wondering that, too.

“I’m writing a book,” Jughead offers unhelpfully; that fact he’s fully aware explains precious little. “I figured I have to make some headway in that time.”

What he’d _really_ figured was that a place like this hidden out in the middle of nowhere would have fewer distractions and all that, but he doesn’t voice that particular line of thought out loud.

But Archie’s eyes widen in excitement regardless, and it’s more than enough to put Jughead on edge all over again. “You write books?”

That earns Archie a short laugh. “I’m trying to,” he answers.

“You should definitely talk to Betty, then,” Archie says, slapping an enthusiastic hand down on the table. “She’s a writer, too. She’ll have so many questions for you.”

She hadn’t mentioned that to him the previous night, but he’s unsurprised. Betty is observant and quietly thoughtful, but with a little moxie, too. She’s smart.

 _Yes,_ he thinks. _She could theoretically make for a fine writer._

_If she ever has the time to write between the thousand and one things that keep her busy._

For all the affront and apprehension she’d tacked on her face for his appearing seemingly out of nowhere the night before, Jughead thinks that she’s more than adept at doing the same. He catches the swish of her ponytail first, twisting slightly around the nape of her neck as she backs into the swinging doors leading to the kitchen.

Then, in a blur of yellow and white, she’s suddenly in front of both him and Archie, both hands full and clutching brown paper bags, talking fast.

“Arch,” she starts, eyes downcast and focused on scanning the receipt she has threaded through her fingers. “I know you ordered turkey on white, but whole wheat is really so much better for you, so I subbed- oh, it’s you. Hi.”

Admittedly, it’s an improvement over her death grip on the pie server.

“Hi,” he says simply. “It’s me.”

“You’re back,” she says, setting the paper bags down on the counter.

He nods, almost teasingly. “It would appear that way.”

“Any problems finding it?”

“Finding what?”

“Ethel’s Place,” she clarifies.

“Exactly where you said it was,” Jughead answers. “The sign is impossible to miss - you were right.”

Next to him, Archie laughs in that big, bravado tremelo of his again. “Dude, it’s the biggest thing in town. We measured it back in high school - Ethel’s bow is bigger than the entire Pop’s sign.”

 _Dude_ , Jughead latches onto.

Archie is one of those guys that says _dude_.

“Arch, stop,” Betty chastises as Archie holds out his arms in demonstration, and Jughead doesn’t miss the way she lightly slaps at Archie’s shoulder with familiarity. “I think it’s sweet.”

“How so?” Jughead asks.

“Ethel is Mr. Muggs’ daughter,” Betty explains. He doesn’t miss the change in her voice either, the way it dips into softness and quietness as she recounts the motel’s history. “It used to be named Jane’s Place, after Mrs. Muggs, but when Ethel was born, he renamed it.”

“Didn’t that piss off Mrs. Muggs?” he asks.

Betty shrugs dismissively, but it’s enough to make him wish he hadn’t ventured further than the boundaries of her sweet story. “Why would it?” she muses. “Ethel is her daughter, too. I’d imagine it’s nice for a parent to see their kid’s name and face in lights like that.”

“Betty,” Archie interjects firmly, flipping through the bags and sliding across what Jughead thinks is about three or four times what he should be tipping. “I have to get back - what did you say was wrong with my sandwich again?”

“Nothing now,” Betty says, voice turning high and bright. “I made it healthier.”

He tries to look elsewhere as Betty flicks the extra bills back Archie’s way with her thumb and pointer finger, and as Archie deliberately ignores the gesture.

It’s a moment he knows he’s not supposed to be privy to, even though he’s more than intrigued.

“It was perfectly healthy before,” Archie says, shoving his hand into his pocket. “I got tomatoes.”

“If it was perfectly healthy before, I wouldn’t have been able to make it healthi _er_.”

“Fine,” Archie says through an eye roll. “Thanks.” And when Archie leans across the counter to press a quick kiss to Betty’s cheek, already turned and waiting in anticipation, Jughead thinks then that he’s read the entire situation wrong.

 _Maybe Ronnie is their son,_ he backtracks quickly. _Maybe they’d all been discussing him over a pancake breakfast that morning._

_And maybe Archie and Betty are that great Riverdale family with the golden retriever waiting for them at their door._

They without a doubt _look_ like they could be.

“See you around, Jughead,” Archie says, clapping him once, soundly, on the back.

“Yeah,” Jughead offers back. He hadn’t realized they’d reached the bro-back-pat stage yet, but he supposes that it’s nice that Archie’s gotten there in ten minutes flat. “Nice meeting you.”

“You should get a burger,” Archie suggests over his shoulder. “Seriously, they’re so good.”

“Oh and Arch, say hi to your dad for me!” Betty calls as Archie dashes out the door. “I put a brownie in there for him!”

She’s still smiling to herself when she turns her attention to him.

 

* * *

 

“You look different today,” Betty comments, tipping her pen in his direction. “I like your hat.”

He feels heat swim up to his cheeks, and somewhere in the back of his mind he hopes that there isn’t red circling there and betraying his embarrassment. It’s a funny looking beanie, he’ll freely admit that, but it makes him feel safe in this town he doesn’t know and that doesn’t know him.

“It’s unusual, I know.”

“It is,” she admits, her voice lilting with gentleness. “But I still meant what I said. I think it suits you.”

He looks for any sign of insincerity on her, but it isn’t there for him to find.

“Thanks,” he says as genuinely as he can to match her own honesty.

He hadn’t expected it to, but his gratitude elicits the smallest of smiles from her. “What can I get you?” she asks.

“A burger. Please,” he says, because no one needs to tell him twice to get a burger, and he’s already been told twice. “And coffee.”

“Just black, right?” Betty asks, turning a cup upright and setting it on a saucer in front of him.

“You remembered.”

She shrugs, her shoulders tilting lopsidedly as she reaches below the counter for a mug. “It comes with the territory. I know everyone’s coffee preferences in this town.”

“Yeah?” he counters back.

“Mmm hmm. It’s not like there’s a ton to remember.”

“Okay,” he challenges. “What about the guy over there - blue hat, plaid shirt?”

Which, he realizes once he’s said it, is really descriptive of all the men in this joint.

But she does well enough at figuring out who he’s referring to.

“Splash of half and half and two Splendas stirred twice counterclockwise.”

“What happens if you go clockwise?”

She smiles, fiddling with the dish towel tucked into her apron. “Oh, he’ll know.”

Jughead doesn’t know if she’s kidding, because really, who could really know a thing like that, but her smile makes him smile. She wears it well - it brightens her whole face and he swears even her ponytail lifts higher. He has a feeling that she doesn’t smile often enough for a girl with that exquisite a smile and he’s glad that he’s had at least some hand in putting it on her face.

“The lady opposite him,” Betty continues, leaning closer to him across the counter. “No milk, five sugars.”

 _“Five?”_ he questions quietly.

“Five.”

“What about the guy at the end of the bar?”

There’s that smile again, and it’s just for him, too. “Trick question,” she whispers back, her breath circling around his earlobe as she leans across the counter and closer to him. “He doesn’t drink coffee. Earl Grey tea, hot, but not too hot.”

“And you?”

For a moment she looks at him surprised, not unlike the way she’d looked at him when he’d asked her about what she thought of her book the night before. But like then, too, she covers it up almost immediately.

“Non-fat milk, no sugar,” she tells him.

She leans back against the back countertop, bracing her hands on either side of her and stretching out her calf muscles as she breathes deeply.

“Are you okay?” he ventures.

“Fine,” she says, flexing and rolling out her ankles. “Just tired.”

“Can I ask?” he starts, following her lead in blowing past the moment. “Why are you still here? I figured your shift would be over by now.”

Betty shrugs. “The flu’s going around. I’m happy to help out where I can. I like staying busy.”

It doesn’t escape him that it’s the second time in the past twenty minutes that he’s had to hear about how busy Betty Cooper likes to stay.

He doesn’t want to doubt her, nor does he want to assume anything about her life. But the rest of Archie’s money is still sitting out on the countertop, and between that and the number of hours she’s been working, he wonders just how honest she’s being with him.

He nudges the folded bills, just slightly and only with his pinky finger, closer to her.

“Archie never was good at math,” she dismisses easily, tossing the money into the tip jar on the counter. “He really should stop overtipping. I’ll go put in your order.”

She disappears back into the kitchen and he’s unsure again of what to make of her.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t get a chance to talk to her again until she’s scooting his coffee cup to the side and replacing it with a large plate that can barely hold the towering burger and the mountain of fries next to it.

“Jesus.”

“And it’s as good as it looks,” she tells him proudly. “Enjoy.”

He’s glad that she has the decency to at least pretend there’s something fascinating under the countertops while he just barely wraps his hands around the burger and takes what he’s sure is the most unattractive bite out of it.

“Well?” she prompts, popping back up with eyes wide and hopeful. “Good?”

“One of the best burgers I’ve ever had,” he reports, and really, it is. “And trust me, I’ve had a lot.”

“It’s Pop’s specialty,” she says.

“Pop made this?”

“Well, yeah,” Betty says slowly. “We’re _in_ Pop’s.”

“I know, but that doesn’t always mean that the proprietor makes your food.”

“It does in Riverdale,” she says. “Do you want to meet him?”

“Pop? Right now?”

“Sure. Or, you know, after you’re done eating.”

He isn’t normally one to leave food sitting out on his plate if he can help it - and especially not a burger this good that will only grow soggier and messier by the minute - but she looks so excited by the idea of him and Pop shaking hands.

He doesn’t want to be the one to take that away from her.

He quickly dusts off the salt and breadcrumbs onto a napkin before rising from the barstool. “Lead the way,” he tells her.

He follows her swishing ponytail past the swinging doors and into the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

He’s forgotten just how hot it can get behind the scenes at a diner, and as he steps past the threshold into the kitchen, he’s hit square in the face with a wave of pure, heavy heat.

“Hey, Pop?” Betty calls as she discreetly jabs her finger twice toward a large man wearing a white triangular hat. “Do you have a minute?”

The man turns to him, spatula still in hand and arms already held wide and open.

“Pop, this is Jughead,” Betty continues. “He’s new here.”

He’s being swept up into a hug before he can step back or protest it, and he just barely has time to retract the hand he has held out, lest he pokes the man straight in the stomach.

Or somewhere else far, far worse and infinitely more embarrassing.

“Welcome to Riverdale, Jughead,” Pop tells him kindly, patting him twice on the shoulder. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“It’s, uh, nice to meet you, sir,” Jughead offers once he’s been released.

“How’s the burger, son?”

A part of him isn’t even surprised that the man knows exactly what he’d ordered. “It’s one of the best I’ve ever had,” Jughead says. “Really.”

Jughead means every word that he shares with the man. He truly does. But there’s something that thrums through him when Pop grins widely and so proudly at his words, something, he thinks, that’s not at all unlike warmth.

He’s always had a way with his written words, but that’s less true of his spoken ones - he’s quick to anger and quick to emotion, and he’s stuck his foot in his mouth more than once because of that tendency.

But that his own words put a smile like that on Pop’s face, has him smiling now, too.

“Well, you’re welcome here anytime, Jughead,” Pop tells him, connecting the syllables of his name without pause. “You look like you could use a couple burgers.”

“That’s what I told him yesterday,” Betty says knowingly.

“You have excellent service here, too, sir,” Jughead fires back, but he makes sure to send something of a smile Betty’s way in case his ribbing fails to translate. “It’s right up there with the burgers.”

Pop laughs then, a loud rumble of a laugh that floats and fills the small kitchen. “Call me Pop,” he’s told. “Everyone in Riverdale does.”

There it is again - that warmth that courses through him from the older man’s words. Jughead knows it has everything to do with circumstance because he’s currently standing in what seems to him to be the heart of the town; but regardless, it’s nice to be included within the umbrella of _‘everyone in Riverdale,’_ even if only for a little while.

Then again, that warmth he’s feeling now could just be from the industrial griddle he’s standing next to.

 

* * *

 

He crashes right into Betty’s back when she crashes into a raven-haired girl on the way out of the kitchen.

“V, oh my god.”

“Sorry,” the smaller woman says, and as she and Betty disentangle themselves from the mess of arms and limbs, he does his best to inconspicuously huff out the strands of blonde ponytail he’d unwittingly sucked up his nose when he’d bumped into her. “Did Archie leave already?”

“A while ago,” Betty says, and when she moves back towards her station behind the bar top, coffee pot in hand, he takes it as his cue to sit back down. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” she says, plum lips tugging downwards. “I thought I’d bring him lunch on the way to- and you are?”

“New,” he responds flatly, with his tongue quite literally stuck in his cheek as he works through a bite of french fry. Frankly, he’s surprised it’s taken the woman this long to even ask.

She strikes him as the need-to-know-all type.

And, she also strikes him as the type that wouldn’t appreciate the answer he’d just given her.

“V, this is Jughead,” Betty fills in seamlessly. “Jughead, Veronica. Archie’s wife.”

_Well, then._

“Veronica Lodge,” she offers primly, extending a hand bearing a glossy, unchipped manicure before he has the chance to even think about mulling over the fact that Mrs. Andrews isn’t in fact, Betty. Or the fact that there’s some kind of odd giddiness that comes alongside that information, too. “I’m sorry, _what_ did Betty say your name was?

_“Jug-head.”_

“Gesundheit.”

There’s a hint of a held-back smile dancing at the corners of Betty’s lips, and he thinks he’d be more upset if she didn’t look so amused.

“Name aside for the moment, and for the moment only because I do want to know more about it,” Veronica continues decisively, and he can tell from just her tone alone that she’s not a person who does well without any and all attention shining directly on her. “What’s your book about?”

“ _Veronica!_ ”

It’s his turn to smile. He doesn’t know exactly when Betty had a chance to tell Veronica what he’s sure is every last detail about him blowing into Riverdale with the storm the night before, but obviously, she had.

And she’d obviously not wanted him to know about that, either.

But because he can’t let the opportunity pass him by - “don’t worry,” he says to her, but only as teasingly as he can, “I know you’ve told everyone all about me.”

“No,” Betty corrects pointedly. “Just Veronica.”

But even so, it’s enough to make her turn away, rosy-cheeked and embarrassed. It’s a pretty color on her, he thinks, the slight blush that tints her cheeks.

It makes her look alive, even in the midst of a double-shift.

“The book,” Veronica says again, tapping the countertop twice to draw his attention. “What could it possibly be about that it’d bring you to Riverdale?”

“You know, I already told your husband all about this. You could ask him.” It’s a little rude, but then again, so is she.

“I could,” Veronica says with an elongated, exaggerated sigh. “But I’m much more interested in finding out from you now.”

Of course she is.

“I… wanted to see what all that small-town charm is about.”

“There’s no charm, believe me,” he hears Betty mutter.

“You really hate it here, don’t you?”

She turns to him with an expression of pure confusion drawn on her face – eyebrows knitted together, head tilted in question – one that has him thinking that she might not even have realized what she’d said.

“What?” she asks.

“Never mind.”

“So you’re writing about Riverdale,” Veronica concludes, pointer finger tapping at her chin. “Am I going to be in this book?”

“I’m not writing _about_ Riverdale,” he corrects. “I’m just... writing what I’m writing about while I’m here.”

“Well, if you do write about me, I demand character approval.”

“I’m not writing about-”

“Yes, yes, you’re not writing about me, you’re not writing about Riverdale. Got it, broken record. Hence the _if_.”

“People haven’t told you ‘no’ a lot in your life, have they?”

Veronica glares at him _. “No,_ they haven’t.”

“Thought so.”

Jughead matches her stare with one of his own and trains his eyes directly on hers. But for all the hard looks he’s had to face off with in his life, for all the narrowed eyes shot point-blank in his direction, this particular pair staring at him now - round and hardened, a true match for the pearls on her neck - greatly unnerves him.

He breaks first, casting his gaze away from Veronica’s and to the pair of quick feet clad in worn, oil-stained Converse working their way down the bar top.

She pours elegantly, he observes, and there’s a relaxing, almost trance-inducing calm that washes over him as he watches the way her wrist arches, the way her fingers curl daintily around the handle and the way her elbow sticks right up against her waist even as she goes about doing the most mundane and commonplace of tasks.

 

* * *

 

He’s grateful when Betty reaches the end of the line and doubles back, if only because he’s not quite sure how to get Veronica Lodge to go away and leave him and his burger in peace.

“V, need anything?” Betty asks, and with just enough bite alongside a pointed leer to send her message across.

_Go away or go sit down somewhere else._

“Nope,” Veronica says, voice bright as she swipes a fry off his plate. “Just let Archiekins know I’m looking for him if he comes by?”

“Excuse you, I was eating tho-”

“Oh relax, you have a mountain of them,” Veronica commands, punctuating her syllables between dainty bites of the french fry. “Consider it a parting gift.”

“Considered.”

“V, I’ll let Archie know if I see him,” Betty says, drawing Veronica’s attention back away from him. “Call you later?”

Veronica nods. “Jughead,” she says, eyeing his plate, “enjoy what’s left of the mountain.” And because he knows already that she’s the type who just can’t leave anything well enough alone - “Betty, you should show Jughead here around Riverdale.”

“V, I’m sure he has better things to do than-”

“No, yeah,” Veronica interjects. “No one knows this one-horse town better than you do. You can show him the flag or the maple tree or whatever it is your grandparents planted when they founded this-”

“Veronica, I don’t-”

“Actually, that’d be great.”

He could be ninety on his deathbed and still not know where the brainchild or confidence for that particular sentence had come from.

“Perfect,” Veronica says, voice sickly sweet and a devilish smile wide across her face. “I’ll leave you two to sort out the details.”

He’s aware of both him and Betty watching as Veronica flits away to one of the booths, inserting herself seamlessly into someone else’s conversation. Then, he’s acutely aware of the palpable, tangible silence breathing in the space between them, building as he lets it persist.

“Listen,” he begins in an attempt to undo at least some of Veronica’s damage. “I just said that to get her off my back. You’re obviously incredibly busy and you don’t need to go out of your way to-”

“Do you have the book with you?”

“What book?”

“You know, the one you wrote, cover and everything?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says slowly. “I mean, not with me right here right now, but I have a copy back at the motel.”

“Good,” she says. “Trade you a tour for it?”

“Seriously?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Deal,” he says quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, but he’ll save his thorough embarrassment over his eagerness for later when his insomnia inevitably kicks in. “I mean, only if you’re free, that is.”

“Saturday,” she says, with a finality that lets him know that her offer isn’t up for debate. “Do you know where the garage is? Across the street, block down from the motel?”

He doesn’t but it doesn’t sound like he needs to be Magellan to find it either. “Yeah,” he says.

“I put in some hours there over the weekend,” she responds. “You can meet me there at eight.”

“What, in the _morning?”_ he clarifies. Eight is on the early side for him, about two or three hours on the early side, if he’s being precise; he’s more of a ‘rise when the sun is already high in the sky’ as opposed to a ‘rise _with_ the sun’ kind of person, but he doesn’t think he has much of a choice since she’s the one with a double diner shift.

“Part of that small-town charm is that good, old-fashioned early bird neighborliness.”

She’s leaning forward and just slightly over onto his side of the counter again, and he does his utmost to look away from his direct line of sight - down the lapels of her uniform. Instead, he forces his gaze to the small bouquet of flowers sitting next to the register.

Which, he discovers, is an entirely new bunch than the ones that’d been there the night before. These are a bright blue bouquet, sharp and pointed at the tips of their petals and vigorously indigo at their centers. He’s never seen flowers quite like these before - he’s never really seen flowers aside from the sad, half-crushed bunches sitting in plastic buckets at the drugstore - and those, he’s never had an affinity for.

They’ve always looked like the idea of what a flower should be, and not an actual flower itself.

But these - this small, possibly handpicked bunch sitting in an old mason jar that once held spaghetti sauce - these are some of the most beautiful flowers he’s ever seen. And in a way, he understands it more now, the world’s fondness for flowers.

He’s particularly fond of these ones himself.

He wonders when in the world she’d found the time to replace them.

“Okay,” he says, clearing his throat loudly. “Saturday at eight.”

Betty stands up straight again before answering, rocking back on her heels. “Good,” she says once more. Her eyes track over to the flowers he’d been staring at moments before, a small smile ghosting at the corner of her lips as she does. “I could use something new to read.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blue cornflower is also known as the bachelor’s button.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> "The Wanderer" - Dion


	3. Periwinkle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my thanks to bugggghead for editing this very long chapter with such care and thoughtfulness.

 

 ****When she gets off the double shift later that afternoon, she doesn’t make it to her bed.

The couch is good enough.

It’s been a while since she’s worked the double shift, much less the graveyard into the breakfast and lunch rush, and she’s exhausted. Every part of her legs hurt from standing, especially her knees, and her arms are sore and raw from balancing hot plates on the lengths of them.

 _Never again_ , Betty promises herself, and even then, she knows that she’s lying because she’s never not been one to snap up an extra shift or two if she’s standing and able.

As she feebly digs for her phone under the cushions, she mentally calculates how long she can reasonably sleep for. She has the rest of today and tomorrow off at Pop’s insistence, but there’s laundry to be done and a house in desperate need of cleaning.

She’d been saving all that precisely for a day like tomorrow, logically which she now deeply regrets.

Then, there’s a pie to be baked because she’s going to Archie and Veronica’s for their weekly Thursday night dinner tomorrow, and even though Veronica has deliberately told her not to bring anything, she always brings dessert.

There won’t be any if she doesn’t.

Veronica doesn’t cook.

And, it’s going to have to be apple, too, because that’s Archie’s favorite, so she knocks off another thirty minutes for peeling and coring.

Sighing, Betty sets her alarm for the next morning – it’s not nearly enough, but it’ll have to do.

_Eight a.m._

That small-town charm, she thinks.

Her scoff bounces loudly against the walls, echoing back only to her.

Then, just darkness.

Blissful darkness.

 

* * *

 

 She ends up hitting snooze one too many times and shows up late to Archie and Veronica’s with an unbaked pie cradled in her hands.

“Sorry I’m late,” Betty says when the door swings open, huffing out her words through her breathlessness.

“Why does it look like that?” Archie comments, frowning down at her handiwork.

“Thanks for bringing the pie, Betty,” she mocks, twisting and scooting past Archie into the house. “That was such a nice thing to do, Betty; you shouldn’t have, Betty.”

“Thanks for bringing the pie, Betty,” Archie repeats, stepping on the back of her heel as he follows her into the kitchen. “But seriously – it looks different.”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m baking it here – I was running late.”

“Oh,” Archie says, turning away and busying himself in the fridge. She knows him well enough to know that she’s thoroughly embarrassed him. “Sorry.”

Betty sighs, wishing she’d thought more before rushing to her own defense, teeth metaphorically barred – Archie deserves some slack.

Even before she’d packed up and left, Mary Andrews had never been the type to bake homemade cupcakes and cookies for her son to take to school on his birthday. Archie’s birthday, she remembers, had always been celebrated with whatever cupcake-adjacent treat Mary could pick up at the supermarket.

And Veronica has never been the type of woman or wife to use the oven for anything but extra storage space, either.

Case in point – the bowl of sad, soggy lettuce sitting on the kitchen counter next to a bottle of Kraft Italian dressing that she’s thoroughly unexcited to dig into.

“It’ll be ready by the time we’re done with dinner,” she tells Archie, adding a wide smile to her words.

And because Archie has always been quick to forgive and even quicker to see the good in her, he smiles right back at her before heading outside to fiddle with the grill and inevitably burn the steaks.

 

* * *

 

Betty hears Veronica before she sees her, sharp points of her heels tapping steadily against the floorboards.

“If you’re cooking, I swear I’ll-” Veronica warns before coming into view, wine glass already anchored in her hand. “Betty.”

“I’m not,” Betty defends, dragging the dish towel out of the salad bowl before holding both her hands up. “I was just… helping.”

“Well, _help_ yourself to wine and come sit with me.”

“Isn’t there anything else to do?” Betty asks, trying her best to hide her worried sweep of the kitchen. She’s been doing these dinners every week with Archie and Veronica for the better part of two years now, and what she knows is that there’s _always_ something that needs to be done.

“Not a thing!” Veronica says, the echo of her voice loud in the hollow microphone of her wine glass. “Just come sit. Relax. Put those tired feet up.”

She takes the long route to the couch, walking around the island and passing by the stove. “Uh, Veronica?” Betty starts, giving the lone pot a half-hearted shake. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“Mashed potatoes,” Veronica responds airily. “I just need to mash them.”

“Have you boiled the potatoes yet?”

“Have I what?”

“Boiled the potatoes.”

“Why would I do that?”

Veronica, her sweet summer child.

“It softens the – never mind,” Betty trails off, moving the pot under the tap to fill it. “I’ll do it quickly.”

“Betty, you do this every week,” Veronica insists, and as she hops up onto the kitchen island, Betty thinks that she’s about the only person in the world capable of doing so gracefully – and in a dress no less. “You’re not here to cook. You’re just supposed to grace us with your presence and let us fawn over you while you sit on your lily pad and help me finish this.” Veronica dangles the bottle of wine out to Betty, clicking the platinum circle of her ring against the glass for emphasis.

“I’ll help,” Betty relents. “But I’m still making these potatoes.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

It’s a striking contrast, the dark, finely spun wools of Veronica’s dress and the soft Italian leather of her heels against the oak-stained reclaimed wood top. Economically speaking, there’s really no difference at all – Betty knows just how expensive that particular slab of reclaimed wood is because she’d borne with a smile and an open ear, every single one of Archie’s gripes about how wood is wood is wood, and why wouldn’t Veronica just pick a slab already.

But dollars and cents aside, there’s something in the balance between Veronica’s modernity and the wood’s earthliness that’s visually stunning.

She’s been friends with Veronica for years now – best friends, even – but there are moments where it still strikes her as completely odd that she and Veronica are as close as they are.

They’re so different, and the cynical part of her had thought when she first met Veronica that there was simply no way she could ever be friends with someone like her – a trust-fund girl, a city-girl, an It-girl. What could they possibly have in common besides Archie?

What would they even talk about?

And, she’d thought, too, that someone like Veronica would want nothing to do with _her_ – the girl from the tiny town of Riverdale, born and raised.

The girl who’d never left.

But Veronica is loyal, maybe even to a fault, and she has been there for her unfailingly and unflinchingly when she’s needed her most. And that matters more, at the end of the day, than any of their differences.

“So, B,” Veronica starts, holding a half-filled glass of wine out to her, “tell me about this date.”

Betty frowns and pulls her head back in surprise, the tip of her ponytail brushing against her neck as she does. “What?”

“Your date. With the writer in the bizarre hat?”

“You didn’t like the beanie?” Betty comments in what she knows is already a vain attempt to derail the conversation. “I thought it was cute.”

“It’s summer and it’s ninety degrees,” Veronica says flatly. “But the date. I want to know everything.”

“V, it’s not a date.”

And it also hasn’t been anywhere close to ninety degrees either, but she knows it’s best to pick her battles with Veronica.

“It’s two people meeting at a designated time and place, participating in a designated activity. Date.”

“Yeah, but when two people go on a date, there’s also, I don’t know, mutual attraction involved? Romance?”

“So you’re not attracted to him? You don’t think he’s romantic?”

“No,” Betty says all too suddenly and with an all too violent shake of her head for Veronica not to pick up and run away with.

“No?” Veronica prods simply. “You seemed excited when you called me about him yesterday. At seven in the morning, I might add.”

In hindsight, maybe that’d been a touch on the early side. “I think he’s… interesting. In that he writes books,” Betty specifies quickly in hopes of drawing Veronica’s arched eyebrow down from her forehead. “And I like books.”

Betty sighs – she’s never been able to lie, let alone lie well. “I don’t know,” she says, voice dropping low. Archie is still outside, fanning away smoke from the grill and she’d rather not have this conversation with him, too. “When it was just us that first night at Pop’s, he asked me what I thought about the book I was reading.”

“What book?” Veronica cuts in.

“The one I keep with me at the diner. You know, the one that fits in my apron pocket?”

“Endless Day, right?”

 _“Endless Night,”_ Betty corrects, leaning her forearms on the island. “He’s actually read it,” she says, and even _she_ can hear the undertone of excitement undulating in her voice. “He told me the title came from some poem.”

Veronica snorts once before popping a cherry tomato from the still-wet salad bowl into her mouth. “Sounds like a line.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” she admits. “But it wasn’t. I looked it up.”

Betty watches as Veronica tips her head back and forth in quiet consideration. “So what’s the problem?”

“He’s not from here?”

_I don’t know anything about him. He doesn’t know anything about me. It’s been a while since I’ve done this._

_I don’t know how I really feel about him._

“So?” Veronica returns easily. “ _I_ wasn’t from here, either.”

“That’s different. You went to college with Archie. Besides,” Betty continues, “I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know who he is or where he’s from. V, I don’t even know if he’s straight.”

“Oh, I know that,” Veronica says, a wide smile paired with her knowing voice. “He was looking down your top. He’s straight. Or you know, straight for you.”

“What? When?”

“Yesterday at Pop’s. He couldn’t _stop_ looking.”

“He was looking at his food,” Betty corrects, and there’s a part of her that doesn’t think her offhand statement is even wrong.

She’s never seen a man look so enamored with a burger before.

Still, she does her best at forcing away her blush.

“B,” Veronica starts seriously, “I’m not going to push you on this if you’re really not interested in him, but no one starts off anything knowing everything about the other person. That’s what makes relationships exciting. Finding out who he is and where he’s from. Finding out if you do get along. Finding out what you have in common.”

“I know,” Betty relents. “It’s just-”

“Who’re we talking about?” Archie interjects, pulling the door to the backyard shut behind him.

“-nobody.”

“-the new guy.” As always, Veronica is louder, and it doesn’t escape her that there’s a strain of verifiable glee in her voice that Betty thinks might just have everything to do with how ready Veronica is to finally shed the new-girl-in-town status.

It’s been three years but no one else has moved to Riverdale since, so the title is still technically hers.

“What about him?” Archie asks.

“noth-”

“-Betty has a date with him.”

“Seriously?” Archie turns to her, grin wide across his face and shoulders drawn back in encouragement. “Betty, that’s great!”

 _“Veronica,”_ Betty admonishes sharply. Then to Archie – “it’s really not a date. I’m just being, I don’t know – neighborly. I’m showing him around town like anyone else would do. The guy has no idea where he is.”

 _“I’m_ not giving him a private tour around town,” Veronica immediately throws into the heartbeat of a pause.

“Yeah, because you set me up!”

“I didn’t!”

“Wait, Ronnie, really?” Archie asks over Veronica’s shrill voice.

“Seriously, guys, it’s nothing and he’s nobody. Just let it-”

Betty whips around at the sound of the doorbell, the tip of her ponytail catching her in the eye at the suddenness of her movement.

“Who is that? Who else is coming?”

It’s wicked, Archie’s smile. There’s no other way for her to describe it than pure wicked.

“Your nobody.”

“ _What?_ Arch, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“Archie, _no_ , you’re such a troublemaker. Just stop this-” Betty rambles frantically as she chases him down to the door. “Don’t say date, okay?” she splutters, waving her hands wildly overhead in an effort to draw Archie’s attention. Like it or not, he’s about to pull open the door and she needs to get her most important points in – and fast. “Don’t say date because it’s not a-”

“Hey, man!”

She watches as Jughead pulls back at the warmth of Archie’s greeting, and likely, at seeing her at the door, arms raised in wild gesture like a maniac.

“Uh, hey,” he says, hands digging deeper into his pockets. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not,” Archie tells him easily, and when Archie claps him once on the shoulder, Betty thinks she sees Jughead flinch. “Come on in.”

“Hi,” she says, offering a pitiful wave for lack of anything better to do.

“Hey,” he responds, pulling a single hand out of his pocket and letting it fall against his side in what she assumes is his attempt at a greeting back. “You know, one of these days I’m going to go somewhere in this town where you’re not.”

She knows he doesn’t mean to be abrasive but she can’t help her affront that follows.

Archie is _her_ friend, isn’t he? Riverdale is _her_ town, _she’s_ the one who’s spent her entire life here, and _he’s_ the one showing up here unannounced, at least to her.

Doesn’t that give her the right to show up behind doors even when he might not expect her there?

“Don’t hold your breath,” she says, ignoring the bite in her voice, ignoring the warning side-eye Archie sends her way.

“So, uh, come on in,” Archie repeats, grasping Jughead’s shoulder this time and tugging him across the threshold. “Beer?”

“Oh,” Jughead says, eyes jumping away from her to the elements of the house around them – the designer table lamp on the hall table, the expensive floral arrangement standing proud next to it. She thinks she knows what he’s thinking, that none of it seems like Archie at all. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

She returns Archie’s side-eye right back to him when he darts off to the kitchen in a hurry, nearly tripping over himself.

She doesn’t think that Archie could be more obvious if he tried.

“So… shall we?” Betty asks, jerking both thumbs in the direction Archie had stumbled down moments before.

“Hey, look,” Jughead says, reaching a hand to hover over her arm for her attention. “I didn’t mean to offend you – I’m sorry if I did. I just – I’m not great at this.”

“What, being in the presence of other human beings?”

“No,” he says. “Although judging by your tone, I’m not sure I’m great at that, either. I meant being in someone else’s house. I can’t remember the last time I was.”

“Oh,” Betty says dumbly. She hadn’t even considered that because it’s all she’s ever known.

That’s her Riverdale life – if she’s not at her house or at Pop’s, then she’s at her parents’, or at Archie and Veronica’s. That’s where they spend their time together, cozied up away in a booth at the diner, or curled up on someone’s couch.

That’s simply the beginning and end of everything here.

“Consider this a preview of the tour, then,” she tells him, turning her voice bright and holding her arms out. “Welcome to Archie and Veronica’s.”

He smiles at her, one chock-full of relief at her quick forgiveness for his foot-in-mouth syndrome. “It’s beautiful,” he says, crouching slightly to examine the intricate swirls on the staircase. “I’ve always wanted one of these.”

“A home?”

She thinks she might’ve struck a nerve when he turns to her sharply, a lock of hair caught under his beanie falling loose as he does.

“No,” he corrects after a beat, his expression falling back to impassive. “A staircase.”

“It was Archie’s wedding present to Veronica.”

“The staircase?”

“No,” Betty says, gesturing around her before letting her hands fall to her sides. “The house.”

“The _house?”_

“Mmm hmm,” she hums. “I mean, Veronica designed it, but Archie built it. From the ground up.”

“Of course she designed it,” Jughead agrees with her, and when he looks at her, hopeful that she’d caught his backhanded dig at Veronica, she laughs lowly. “From the ground up, huh? That’s unusual.”

_Is it?_

She wonders if there’s some sort of significance to the way he lingers on those words, the way he seems so taken with the idea of someone simply building a house. The concept doesn’t seem all that farfetched to her, but maybe that’s something she’s simply been conditioned to at this point.

Maybe it _is_ highly unusual, and maybe this is just a Riverdale thing.

As it stands, she wouldn’t know otherwise.

“Archie loves her,” she says simply. “Isn’t that what you do with the person you love? Build a home?”

“There’s building a house and there’s building a home.”

“And you think they’re that different?”

“Well,” he says, shrugging, “aren’t they?”

“I-”

“ _Betty!_ The pie!”

Betty holds back an eye-roll at Veronica’s shrill voice piercing through the conversation. She’s baked this exact same pie every Thursday night for the past year and a half, and she knows that there’s still a good fifteen minutes left before she needs to think about checking on it.

But that isn’t the point. The point is that they’re still out here in the hall having a private conversation that Veronica Lodge isn’t privy to all the way in her white kitchen, and that’s simply unacceptable to her.

“Archie can explain it all better than I can,” Betty says. “He’s in construction.”

She leads him into the lion’s den, drawing her shoulders back as she does, hoping it encourages him to do the same.

She feels like they might need the courage tonight.

 

* * *

 

She considers protesting when Archie suggests beers around the fire-pit after a nearly inedible dinner since she’s Riverdale’s most susceptible resident to any and all biting bugs.

 _“It’s because you’re so sweet, Betty,”_ she’s always been told.

But she decides against it. The fire-pit is a new addition to the Andrews-Lodge home, a pet project newly finished and cemented in last month, and Betty knows just how much Archie’s been wanting to show it off.

And rarely does Archie look this overtly proud of himself, too, so she simply grabs an old quilt from the basement – the hideous one that she’d made for Archie as a high school graduation gift, the one with actual pictures of their seven, nine, and thirteen-year-old faces screened and sewn into the squares – and wraps it around herself for protection.

“Cute,” Jughead remarks simply, and she can tell by his tone alone he means cute at least a little bit teasingly, if not mockingly.

“Isn’t it?” she throws back, smiling down at the picture of her and Archie in their water-wings squarely displayed on her right shoulder.

“So, Jughead,” Veronica begins, stacking the points of her heels against the brick as she speaks. “Tell us everything about yourself.”

Betty watches him internally squirm and his shoulders visibly stiffen at Veronica’s question. _He’d really rather not_ , she reads.

_Everything is far too indefinite._

“Well,” Jughead counters slowly, “what do you want to know?”

“For starters – where are you from? What does your family do, where do they come from? Do they have any vacation houses? Where did you spend your summers in your salad days? The basics, Jughead,” Veronica says, patting the armrest of her lawn-chair twice. “The important things.”

“And those are the important things?”

“Insanely so.”

“That’s not even close to-”

“Jughead, what’s your second book about?” Betty interrupts.

She thinks he’s grateful for her pinch-hitter of a question; even through the flecks of flame she sees reflecting in his eyes, there’s something else there, too.

Something that’s bright all on its own.

“Honestly?” Jughead asks, inhaling with his question. “I’m not sure yet. The first was a mystery, but I don’t know that it’s really my wheelhouse.”

“How can it not be?” she asks.

Jughead shrugs. “I think one’s wheelhouse implies it’s something I can do and do well at least more than once. I don’t know that I can.”

“Wheelhouse simply implies that you’re skilled in a particular area,” Betty starts, leaning forward and anchoring her elbow onto her lap. “You wrote a mystery novel – that has to mean you have some skill in that arena.”

He matches her lean forward by leaning back into his chair, his dark shirt a stark contrast against the beige cushions she’d spent hours helping Veronica pick out. _Sand_ , they’d landed on eventually, after three hours of waffling back and forth between that and the eggshell shade that, really, were exactly the same.

“Half of me thinks I just lucked into that first book,” Jughead continues. “Read it first before you put all that faith in me. Trust me, there are a ton of reviews that completely disagree with you.”

“A ton, huh?” she says, but lightly enough that teasing instead of derision conveys.

“You’re free to come at my definition again, Webster, but let’s just say it’s more than enough.”

She laughs then, grateful at least in part for his response. The only other man she’s really thrown any shade of mocking criticism at in her life is Archie.

_Sulk-for-a-week, passive-aggressive, silent-treatment Archie Andrews._

If nothing else, Jughead is a good change of pace.

But she can so acutely feel the weight of Archie and Veronica’s eyes watching her, watching them and so she breaks the hold she has on him and turns her gaze skyward, leaving someone else to take over.

 

* * *

 

The night balances on the edge of perfection, hovering just before the cusp of the heavy heat of the season. There’s a slight breeze that rolls across the skies, that hums through the trees, and when she feels it just barely nipping at her skin as it comes and goes, as it ebbs and flows, there’s a peaceful sort of slowness that settles and wraps around her; one that’s not unlike the quilt she has tucked around herself now.

Nights like these, where the world feels wholly still, where it vibrates in tranquility like the notes in a bass and a treble line in harmony are her favorite kinds of nights. They always have been.

With her chin balanced in her cupped palm, she breathes in slowly and deeply, savoring the scent and plucking apart the notes of the night.

The dewiness of the cut grass as the wind shakes its scent; the hint of a sharp, acidic sting bouncing against the thin frame of her wine glass.

Veronica’s perfume, and Archie – a wonderfully sweet smell that isn’t any one thing in particular, and that she labels simply as her childhood and history and happiness all in one.

And then, something else that she can’t quite detangle from the others – something earthy and comfortable – a little like rain and the outside, and a little like the flowers next to the register at Pop’s she sneaks a sniff of when no one’s looking.

It’s something that, to her, smells simply like safety and warmth.

The voice that ends up breaking the easy rumble of Archie and Veronica murmuring quietly to themselves isn’t the one she expects.

“So,” Jughead says conversationally, turning his attention to Archie and drawing hers back earthbound, too, “Betty told me you built this house.”

Archie’s smile is unparalleled when he’s smiling in pride, at least to her. “It’s crazy, right?” Archie says, holding both his hands out in front of him. “These hands actually built something that we can live in. Well, my hands and my dad’s and twenty other construction guys.”

“He’s being modest,” Betty interjects _._ “Arch, come on. You built this entire home by yourself and you know it.”

“House,” she hears Jughead say, and softly enough that she thinks it travels only to her.

“Excuse me?”

Judging from the look of surprise that crosses his face, Betty thinks he might not even have realized he’d said anything. “Nothing,” he covers quickly.

“No, I’m curious,” Betty insists, ignoring Archie’s wide eyes and terse head-shake in her direction. “You obviously have an opinion about this – it’s the second time you’ve brought it up tonight.”

She watches as he considers her and what she’s asking of him, breathing slowly and steadily as he does. He leans forward then, sliding his beer bottle onto the small deck table before resting his elbows on his knees.

“A house and a home aren’t the same thing,” he starts. “You use them interchangeably but they’re not, and not by a long-shot either.”

“I understand the difference,” Betty fires back. “A house is the building itself – it’s the four walls and a roof over your head. But at some point, doesn’t a house just become a home? You live there, you build your life there. At some point, they become interchangeable, and so do the words.”

Jughead shakes his head at her in gentle disagreement, a strand of loose hair swinging across his forehead as he does. “I’m willing to bet that you can say that because you’ve only ever known homes and not houses,” he says. “You can live somewhere without that place ever becoming your home. A home is more than the place that you sleep at night. I’d argue that it can even be more than the place that you build your life.”

“So what is it, then? What is that magical thing that makes a house a home?”

Over the flames that jump up and lick at the open air above, he looks at her, and so intently that she has the urge to look away. She thinks he’s searching for something in the way he’s looking at her, and fleetingly, she wonders what it might be.

“If you find out, let me know,” Jughead says eventually, voice far away. “I’ve been wondering for a while.”

 

* * *

 

When Veronica frowns at the idea of cleaning up the dinner table, Betty jumps at the opportunity. She has words, plural, that she wants to trade with Archie and she figures that right now at the dishwasher is as good a time as any.

“You could’ve warned me, you know,” she starts, looking up at Archie as she snatches, with more force than necessary, the plate he rinses off and hands to her.

At least Archie has the decency to look guilty. “That would’ve taken the fun out of it.”

“Because it was so fun for me to be ambushed by him at the door?”

Archie sighs. “Are you really pissed at me or is this you just thinking about being pissed at me?”

“Honestly, I haven’t decided yet. Arch, you know I hate stuff like this. I _don’t like_ surprises.”

“Betty,” Archie sighs, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to _surprise_ you.”

“Well, you did. And where did you even find him, anyhow? Did you go to his motel room?”

 _“No,”_ he says sharply, face growing red. “He was at Pop’s last night.”

“Oh.”

Archie takes his time in turning off the tap, twisting his hand on the knob slowly. “Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t invite him over just for you?” he asks quietly.

“I’m sure Veronica will be thrilled by her competition,” Betty says flatly.

“That’s not what I meant.” Archie sighs deeply, frustrated, but his voice is quiet when it comes. “Look, Betty, I don’t – I don’t have a ton of dude friends.”

 _“Dude friends?_ What are you even- _”_

“Friends who are dudes. Guys. Whatever. You know what I’m saying.”

She supposes she does.

“So you want Jughead to be your – what did you call it – _dude friend?_ ” Betty says, trying and spectacularly failing at holding back her laughter. _Sure,_  she thinks _, Jughead may be more of a ‘dude’ or ‘bro’ than she is, but she doesn’t know that the writer in the pointed beanie is Archie’s perfect match, either._

“Never mind, just forget-”

“Fine, Arch - I’m sorry,” Betty says, swallowing her amusement. “I’m sorry. But you have dude friends.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

She pauses, thinking. _He really doesn’t,_ she realizes now that she’s been put on the spot. Archie has her and Veronica, he has his dad and some of the guys who work down at the sites with him, but that’s about it.

“Reggie,” she offers lamely and after far, far too long.

“Friends that still live in this town, Betty.”

“There’s Moose,” she says, slapping at his chest. “And Kevin! You’re friends with Kevin.”

She watches as Archie sighs over at her, face painted over with disbelief. And she knows full well why, too. Kevin, for all his positives and as much as she loves him, isn’t Archie’s one-to-one. There’s so much Archie and Kevin both differ on – their likes, the way they spend their time, their lives.

If she’s being honest, she gets along with Kevin much better than Archie ever has; there’s far less silence between her and Kevin when they’re together.

And she isn’t wrong – there’s Moose, too.

But Moose has Midge, an eight-month-old, and dinner at seven on the dot every night.

“To be fair, he doesn’t exactly live here, either. But, fine,” Betty relents, hand coming to her hip as she does, “so maybe you don’t have a ton of dude friends here.”

“Thank you.”

“Then why are you standing in here with me?” she asks gesturing towards the door. “Go make a dude friend out of him.”

“I will,” he says. Then, and she should’ve fully seen coming – “You know, I invited him here for you, too. Ronnie said that you like him.”

“Yeah,” Betty deflects. “He’s nice.”

“Just nice?”

 _“Yes,”_ Betty says pointedly. “Arch, why are you pushing this?”

“Because I want you to be happy.”

She feels her forehead wrinkle as her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “And you think I need a _man_ to be happy? If that isn’t the most sexist, offensive thing I’ve ever-”

“I _don’t_ think you need a man to make you happy, Betty,” Archie interrupts forcefully. “You’ve never needed that. I just-” he sighs then, looking so frustrated and fed-up with her that it almost makes her turn the guilt she’s been throwing on him back onto herself.

“I just wanted to help,” Archie says eventually, and when he casts his sad, puppy-dog eyes downward, Betty forgets for a moment that they aren’t seven anymore. “I didn’t think you’d do anything about it, even if you wanted to. Betty, you never do anything for yourself. You do everything for everyone else, but never for yourself.”

“I cleaned my house today.”

At that, Archie simply looks at her, eyes narrowed and arms crossed over his chest. She knows, though, exactly what that means – her response is so pathetic that it doesn’t even dignify an answer.

“Arch, I know you meant well,” Betty relents. “You always do. But I don’t know that I like him. I mean, how can I? I know nothing about him.”

“Well,” Archie says, turning her back towards the door to the backyard and sending her off with a gentle nudge. “Here’s your chance. Go find out.”

 

* * *

 

Her chance comes when Jughead piggybacks onto her excuse to leave dinner, the same one she gives every week.

_Early shift tomorrow morning._

This time, though, it’s actually true.

Betty doesn’t think much of him following her out of Archie and Veronica’s front door until she double-takes at the driveway when she fails to see his bike parked out next to Archie’s truck. Then, in a flurry of pleasantries and Archie mumbling something about cleaning the grill so he’s _very_ sorry but he can’t walk her home as usual, she’s standing side by side with him in front of a closed door.

 _Here’s your chance,_ she hears Archie saying to her as she studies his footfalls against the pavement, as she lines her steps up with his, keeping time. _Here’s your chance to find out._

 _But find out what,_ she wonders.

_And how?_

She’s inexperienced in love – the romantic, head over heels, hold a radio over her head, throw all caution to the wind kind of love.

She’s had a handful of boyfriends before – Archie for two whole days in fifth grade before they’d both realized how incredibly unsettling that all was, Adam who she hadn’t even known had been her boyfriend because since she hadn’t been aware that _‘let’s go to Prom as friends’_ translated to serious relationship, and Trev who she just plainly and simply hadn’t gotten along with. But she’d more or less fallen into those relationships without much thought at all; they’d simply happened.

Betty knows love – the familial kind of love because she has her parents in her life. She has Polly, the twins, and Veronica, and god knows she loves all of them. She has Archie, too, and if nothing else, she knows in her heart of hearts that she loves him.

But she’s not _in_ love with him, and she never has been.

Truthfully, she doesn’t think she’s ever been in love with anyone.

She’s loved. She _loves_.

But she’s never been in love.

She remembers the first Christmas Archie had spent home from college, cheeks a perfect match to his hair, not at all from the cold but from a dark-haired girl, one Veronica Lodge who he’d met at some post-finals party.

“She’s amazing, Betty,” he’d told her, voice dreamy, miles away in the cold land of Chicago.

“You mean the way she spreads her legs for you is amazing,” she’d responded, voice flat and unamused.

It’s one of the only times Archie had ever been furious with her, and the only time he’d ever stormed right out her door without affording her the chance to explain herself.

Not that she’d deserved anything less than the wrath of Angry Archie with a flippant, judgmental comment like that. To this day, it still makes her cringe with embarrassment.

Polly had been so sure that the reason she’d felt so shaken could and must be chalked up to jealousy. She’d been secretly in love with Archie all these years, Polly had insisted, boho-sleeves fluttering wildly as she gestured, but no matter because _this_ was the moment. This was _the_ big moment that they’d both finally realize how much they loved each other and how living their lives apart was simply unthinkable.

And in a way, all that had been true and Polly had been right. She _does_ love Archie, and spending her life apart from him _is_ unthinkable.

But they’re day and night, her and Archie. They’re apples and oranges. And love, she thinks, as much as she doesn’t know about it, seems more suited for two people who represent both sides of the same coin rather than different ones.

Day and day or night and night – either or, not one from each.

And at the end of the day, and the end of the night, she loves Archie.

Just not like that.

She’d apologized to him, and after he’d blown out of Riverdale and back into the waiting arms of the girl with a trust fund in Chicago, she’d thoughtfully and politely fielded every single one of his two a.m. phone calls, helping him decipher what the hell Veronica Lodge meant when she said this or that. What this emoji versus that emoji meant, what _‘lol’_ versus _‘haha’_ meant in the grand, cosmic scheme of it all.

Was she mad at him?

Did she _like_ him?

“I love her,” he’d told her one night, in a tone she’d never heard from him before.

“Arch, it’s been a month,” she’d responded, but as gently as she could. “You don’t _know_ her. You don’t know where she comes from; you just found out her major two days ago. You don’t even know her middle name.”

 _You don’t love her,_ she’d wanted to say, but she’d remembered how well a comment like that had gone over with him the last time.

“You don’t get it. It’s like, I just look at her and I know that I love her. I know that I want to be with her and that I want to take care of her. I don’t want to be with anyone but her. I don’t need to know her middle name to know that.”

 _Cecelia,_ she’d learned later when she’d met the girl who stole Archie’s heart. Veronica’s middle name is Cecelia.

Then, she’d let Archie know because she’d figured it’d be a good piece of information for him to keep in his back pocket. He’d thanked her but the fact still remained.

He didn’t need to know her middle name to know that he was in love with her.

They’d fallen in love so quickly, Archie and Veronica. They’d done everything quickly – by their senior year of college, they’d been picking out centerpieces and cummerbund colors, and looking at venues instead of spring breaking. She’d thought about telling Archie to slow down, to take a second to think it all through; she’d never understood their monumental need to rush through life. _There’s so much time to be married,_  she’d wanted to tell both of them, _the rest of their lives to be adults and such a finite, fleeting time to be young._

Why now?

And how did he know? That of all the people in this wide, wide world – how did he know that Veronica was the be all and end all of everything?

But, she’d told herself – she’s made her fair share of monumental, life-changing decisions, too, so who is she to advise and judge?

She doesn’t know life any better than Archie does.

And for all her worrying and wondering, it’s worked out so far – Archie is happy and so is Veronica and that, Betty figures, is the most important bottom line of all.

“So, listen,” Jughead begins. His voice is louder than she’d anticipated and it breaks through the stillness of the night folding in around them. “I didn’t know you’d be at Archie’s tonight. I wouldn’t have shown up if I’d known.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him and the way his shoulders hunch together as he addresses her and opens up the metaphorical can of worms that is and was this dinner, the way he stares resolutely ahead at the straight path in front of them.

 _No,_ she decides eventually. He really hadn’t known she’d be there, and he really wouldn’t have shown up if he’d known.

“Why not?” she asks.

Jughead shrugs. “It didn’t seem like you wanted me there.”

“That’s not true.”

“Archie and Veronica’s screen door isn’t the Great Wall of China, Betty.”

_Oh._

_Oh no._

How much had he heard?

And what had he _seen?_

“Oh,” Betty says slowly. “I, uh-”

“Relax, I didn’t hear anything,” he interjects, and even if he’s lying straight to her face, it has her breathing out a sigh of relief. “Veronica’s voice is shrill enough to drown you, Archie, and all of Riverdale out at the same time. You just – you looked pissed. I figured all that wild gesturing was about me crashing your dinner party. I’m sorry if I did.”

She wouldn’t call it wild, exactly, but even she knows it hadn’t been particularly on the tame side, either.

“I was angry, a little,” Betty admits, now brave enough to turn her shoulders his way, to let her eyes meet his. “I’ve known Archie my entire life. We grew up together. We have baby photos of us naked in the bath together.”

“Charming.”

She laughs nervously, feeling heat prick behind her cheeks at having revealed something so personal to a perfect stranger.

“Archie has the best intentions,” Betty admits. “He always does. But the way he tries to help sometimes is misguided.”

“What was he trying to help with?”

“Oh,” Betty says slowly, searching for the right words. “Everything, I guess. My life in general. I don’t know.” She sighs, feeling her shoulders heave with the motion. “I think Archie feels guilty sometimes,” Betty admits. “We used to do everything together.”

“Like share bath water.”

She smiles, huffing out a half-hearted laugh. “But he has Veronica now. He’s married, you know – the grown-up kind of married and not pretend-backyard wedding married.”

“Which is something I’m guessing you used to do together, too.”

“That would fall under the umbrella of everything,” she muses. “I think Archie thinks I’m lonely.”

There’s sincerity in the way he looks at her, in the way his eyes soften at the corners as he nods slowly. “And are you?” he asks. “Lonely?”

“No.” His eyebrows rise at the quickness of her response. “I’m really not. Honestly, I don’t think I have enough time to feel lonely.”

“But that doesn’t mean you aren’t,” Jughead says thoughtfully. “I know - you like to stay busy - but you don’t have to feel lonely to actually _be_ lonely.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“More like general knowledge.”

“Mmm,” she hums, considering his argument. He’s right, she supposes, in some kind of theoretical sense. But still – “I think Archie’s just projecting.”

“Meaning?”

“I never really thought about how lonely Archie might be,” Betty says. “I have him and Veronica, I have my parents, I have Polly and the twins. But I forget sometimes that Archie’s not like me. He’s always been everyone’s friend. He’s always been reliable. I think it’s hard for him here sometimes when there’s only so many people you can be friends with and only so many people who rely on you.”

He’s turned towards her, shoulders tilted in her direction as they walk. It’s a little unnerving to have someone listen to her every word as intently as he’s doing, and she feels a ring of heat building around her neck.

“So why don’t they move?” Jughead asks. “Archie and Veronica? At the end of the day, it’s just packing up and moving – that’s easy enough to do.”

“And maybe it is for you,” Betty responds. “But it’s not for them. There’s a lot keeping Archie here.” She says what comes next quietly because she doesn’t know if she really should be revealing information that doesn’t belong to her. “I don’t think Archie always wanted to come back to Riverdale, but it was the right thing for him to do – his dad needed him.”

“Oh,” Jughead says quietly.

“Archie will never show you anything but his stupidly happy face, but it’s easy to forget that about him sometimes – that he probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for circumstance. That he’s lonely.”

“So if I’m getting this right, Archie wants to be... friends with me?”

Betty laughs at the directness of the simple statement. “It would appear that way, wouldn’t it?” she muses. “But you couldn’t make a better one.”

 

* * *

 

Betty ventures the next question when they round the corner away from Archie and Veronica’s house.

“You said you were in Chicago last?” she asks softly, remembering how he’d bristled at the barrage of questions Veronica had thrown his way earlier.

“Mmm hmm,” he hums.

“And that’s home?”

He shrugs, running his hand along the picket fence to his side. “Not really. It’s just... where I was last.”

“So where is home then?”

“Honestly?” he asks. “Take your pick: Chicago, Toledo, Minneapolis – it’s all the same to me. I’ve lived in a lot of places.”

“That sounds nice,” she offers conversationally.

“What, Minneapolis? Trust me, it’s not.”

“No, I meant living somewhere new. I’ve never lived anywhere but Riverdale. Variety,” she says, “novelty, someplace new – it must be nice.”

“In theory, sure,” he tells her, eyes fixed forward.

“And in reality?”

His head tilts slightly as he studies her. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Jughead says eventually. “For me, anyway.”

She gets the sense that this isn’t a particularly thrilling line of questioning for him, so she treads elsewhere. “Okay,” Betty offers instead, “where did you grow up, then, if none of those places are home?”

The corner of his mouth quirks upward, almost teasingly. “Don’t laugh,” he prefaces.

“Scout’s honor.”

“I grew up in a diner in Toledo.”

She’d expected to at least _want_ to laugh at whatever he’d come back with, but she doesn’t. There’s something oddly poetic about those carefully chosen words, and something a little tragic about them, too.

“You seem to know a lot about them,” Betty offers. “Diners, I mean.”

“I do. My mom was a waitress,” he says, and when he does, there’s something in his voice that doesn’t sound completely present. There’s a detachment there, a coolness that puts her on guard even as he holds his face steady. “I spent a lot of time there as a kid. I helped out when and where I could.”

“Folding napkins, right?” she asks.

“What?”

“That first night at Pop’s, you were folding napkins like you’d done it a thousand times before.”

“I probably have – folding napkins, refilling ketchup bottles, bussing tables – all of it,” he confirms. “I did everything there except cook.”

For all intents and purposes, she’d grown up in a diner, too. She’d spent her birthdays tucked away into a booth at Pop’s surrounded by her family, danced on her dad’s toes to the lulling sounds drifting from the jukebox, shared so many burgers and even more milkshakes with Archie there.

Under the neon red _24-hours_ sign at Pop’s that had kept her safe and sane through even her darkest, most trying of days, she’d become the person she is today, transformed from child to adult, girl into woman.

But she highly doubts that the way she’d grown up – within the warmth of Pop’s, and with the sweetness of a strawberry milkshake always on her tongue – is in any way comparable to the way he’d grown up in this unnamed, nondescript Toledo diner.

Betty watches his foot step next to hers. It’s the first time she’s noticed his shoes, she realizes, the first time they haven’t been hidden behind Veronica’s massive island or tucked under a barstool at Pop’s.

Her Converse are worn and loved – they’re the very same shoes she uses for her shift. They’re splattered with drops of errant, flyaway grease and on the back of the right heel, with a ketchup stain that she still hasn’t been able to bleach off. Looking down at them now, she’s slightly embarrassed that _this_ is the footwear choice she’d made tonight; her Converse aren’t a pretty sight, they’d simply been the shoes closest to the door on her way out.

But his shoes look like they’ve been through even more than her own. The soles tired and thin, more so than hers, and the laces are frayed nearly all the way through. They’re grey now, painted with scratches and scuffs, hard evidence of a life lived on the road.

Her own shoes are worn. But she also has so many people in her life who’d rush to her side, shoebox and brand-new pair of Converse in hand before her shoes began to look half as bad as his.

She wonders where his people are.

She wonders if he has any.

 

* * *

 

They’re almost at the corner of her street when he clears his throat loudly.

The sound echoes into the silence before it's swept away with the evening breeze. It’s a balmy one tonight, with just the hint of a bite of cold, but she doesn’t mind. It makes her feel a little more alive.

“So your family lives in Riverdale, too, then. Since you’ve never lived anywhere else?”

“That’s my parent’s house over there,” Betty says, pointing and jabbing into the distance. “The one with the red door.”

“The Casa Cooper,” he says, nodding slowly. “It’s nice.”

That, she hadn’t expected from him.

“The yellow one next to it is Archie’s house – Archie’s old house,” Betty continues, barely registering the words from her mouth. _Really, when did he learn her last name?_ “It’s just his dad living there now.”

“Where’s his mom?”

It doesn’t escape her that he’d glommed onto that particular detail as quickly as he had. “The Andrews divorced a long time ago. Mary hasn’t lived there in years.”

“Oh,” he says slowly, almost like he can’t quite believe her.

“Actually,” Betty says, unearthing the envelope she’d tucked into her jacket pocket earlier. “Would you mind waiting? I meant to give this to them a few days ago.”

“Be my guest.”

Not wanting to keep him waiting for too long, she takes off down the path in a brisk jog and hops up the steps to her childhood home two at a time. It’s always a comforting feeling, the soles of her shoes against the worn stone, but she doesn’t linger on the familiarity today.

At her front door, Betty slips the envelope through the mail slot, holding the metal flap open and releasing it gently back to its original position. She doesn’t normally mind stopping over at her parents’ house and answering the same barrage of how-are-you, are-you-eating-well questions, but she’d rather not today when there’s someone across the street she just knows her mother will have one hundred and one questions about.

As the mail flap falls shut, there’s a whiff of something familiar that wafts in her direction. _Apple pie,_ she thinks, smiling as she jogs back. The exact pie and exact recipe she’d brought over to Archie and Veronica’s earlier.

“Thanks for waiting,” Betty says.

“So I’m guessing you don’t live with your parents?”

“Oh my god, no!” Internally, Betty cringes at just how emphatically she’d answered. “No,” she repeats, bringing her voice back down to an acceptable decibel. “I live on my own. I love my parents, and they’ve done more for me than any parents should ever have to, but I could never live with them.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asks.

“By what?”

“That your parents did more for you than they should ever have to. Isn’t that a parent’s job?”

“We used to own the _Riverdale Register,_ ” Betty recites flatly, turning the corner for her street and leaving him to follow. She figures that schadenfreude or at the very least, morbid curiosity, should be enough to for him to follow. “That’s the town’s newspaper – you’ve probably seen it around.”

“I have.”

She can’t decide if that makes her feel better or worse about everything. “It’s been – it _was_ – in my family for generations, but I had money troubles about two years ago. My parents sold it, just like that.”

Betty inhales deeply, arming herself for the remainder of the story – it’s never an easy one to tell. And when she speaks, even she can hear the heaviness in her own voice, the strands of guilt and responsibility lacing together. “I needed money, but my parents wouldn’t let me take out a second mortgage on my house. They wouldn’t let me get a loan. I don’t have any debt because of what they did for me. But the Coopers? We’re not the newsmen of Riverdale anymore and my dad was always so proud of that. It’s what he’d always say to me – _‘the Coopers tell stories, Betty – it’s what we do. The Coopers tell the truth’._ It’s on me that we don’t anymore. They shouldn’t have had to do that for me.”

“Archie said you were a writer,” he says, pulling the pieces together with trepidation in his voice.

“I was, once. Before. I used to write for the _Register_ when my parents owned it.”

“And you don’t anymore? Why not?”

“I wrote for the Blossoms for a bit after they bought it,” Betty explains. “But they wanted to do things differently than we’d done them in the past.”

“So you quit? Just like that?”

“You make it sound like it was an easy decision,” Betty says, rounding on him. “It wasn’t.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that it was,” Jughead responds. “Look, you’re talking to someone who spends his time either writing or thinking about writing. I don’t know what I’d do if I was forced to give it up.”

Betty inhales deeply in an effort to push away her anger, her need to jump to defense and metaphorically throw up her fists at him. She hates this story.

She really hates it.

“I think about writing for the _Register_ again sometimes,” she admits to him quietly, tilting her head in his direction to catch his reaction.

 _Curiosity_ , she reads on him. _Interest_. “Why don’t you?”

Betty shrugs. “Our families tolerate each other now because of Jason and Polly, but they still don’t really get along.”

“Jason and Polly?”

“Polly’s my sister,” Betty explains, “and Jason is the Blossom she married.”

Jughead whistles lowly. “And how did your dad take that?”

“If you happen to meet him, it’s not something I’d mention.”

“Noted.”

Betty laughs lowly at his quick uptake. “I don’t think my dad really minds Jason,” she says. “At least not anymore. Jason makes Polly happy and my dad loves the twins – my niece and nephew. It’s just – it’s a whole lot of bad blood, I guess.”

“I can’t imagine bad blood in a town this small.”

“Why not? Bad blood exists within actual families – those are worlds smaller than an entire town. It isn’t that hard to imagine.”

He looks over at her, squarely catching her gaze before nodding in agreement. “No,” he says slowly. “When you put it that way, I guess it isn’t.”

“It’d be nice, writing for the _Register_ again,” she says, marveling briefly at the depth of wistfulness in her own voice. “But I don’t think it’s something my dad would approve of me doing, not after every embarrassment he had to suffer in selling it. And I couldn’t do that to him, either – he’s already done too much for me. So I wait tables now, and that’s perfectly fine,” she says, shrugging. “I’ll figure something out.”

There’s a slow, measured beat before he answers, “Being a waitress isn’t a horrible thing, Betty.”

Her eyes widen at the realization, and at the cavalier, blithe tone she’d taken without so much as a second thought.

_His mother was and possibly still is a waitress._

_He’d grown up taking orders and bussing tables._

_Her gig at Pop’s might be a temporary thing for her, but for so many others, it’s all they’ll ever know._

“No, no!” Betty backtracks quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was. I’m _so_ grateful for this job – Pop gave me a chance when no one else would. I was a terrible waitress at first. I was a dropper. I mixed up orders and I spilled things. I broke them. He should’ve fired me,” she says. “But he didn’t. I think everyone in Riverdale has worked at Pop’s at some point, it’s like a rite of passage here. It was my turn, I guess. It’s just – not what I expected my life to be, that’s all.”

“What did you expect your life to be, then?” he asks, running his hand along the fence at his side.

“Less white picket, if we’re starting somewhere,” she says.

“Aren’t they the cornerstones of the American dream?” he counters. “White picket fences aren’t horrible things, either.”

“Of course they’re not,” Betty responds. “I grew up with one; it kept me safe every night. They may be the American dream, but they’re not mine.” She sends something she hopes resembles half a smile over in his direction. “Didn’t you know? There’s actually some kind of town ordinance about them.”

“About the fences? You’re kidding.”

She fails to hold back a snort her mother would chide her for as most decidedly unladylike. “Three-point-five feet high, Benjamin Moore eggshell paint, and eight feet wide – at least in this neighborhood,” she recites. “You can’t make this stuff up – I tried changing my fence once, that’s how I know.”

Betty stops at the pavers leading up to her front door and turns to him, back resting against her fence.

“So this is you?” Jughead asks, facing her, facing her house. “Picket fence and all?”

“In all its glory.”

“It’s nice. Cute.”

“Tell that to my mom.”

“She doesn’t like it?”

“Too much farmhouse and not enough Cape Cod for her taste,” Betty says, looking back at her little ranch-style with a fond smile. “But at the end of the day, it’s mine, and that’s a nice thing to fall asleep knowing, you know?”

“I don’t, but I can imagine that it is,” he says simply, but there isn’t any malice or judgment in his voice. “Oh, and by the way – here.”

Betty watches as he swings back the flap of his messenger bag, worn too, but not nearly as much as his shoes, packed tightly with stacks of papers and to her amusement, his computer.

For all the writing he’d been planning on doing in between the soggy salad courses and overdone steak that almost gave her lockjaw, she gathers.

“Cover and everything,” he says, holding the hardback across to her.

“Oh!” she says, grasping for it eagerly. The cover isn’t much to look at – a blurry cityscape in tones of grey, but she’d figured it would be. She doesn’t know much about him, but she knows enough to know that he isn’t the type of man to write a book that begs for sunshine and daisies on the cover.

 _“The Prison Game,”_ she reads out. “J.P. Jones. What does the P stand for?”

 _Jones,_ she thinks, turning the name over in her head. She’d expected something more exotic given the nickname.

But she’s really no one to judge given her hum-drum Cooper-status.

He pauses before answering. “Pendleton.”

“So your real name is Pendleton Jones?”

“Pendleton’s my middle name,” he corrects, color rising to his cheeks. “My first name is something I’m not telling you.”

“Is it a girl’s name?” she teases. “Did your parents think you were going to be a girl, pick out a name, and just couldn’t end up parting with it?”

“You were going to be Bob Cooper, weren’t you?” Jughead counters back, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

“Hardly.”

But Polly _was_ going to be Paul Cooper after Great-Grandaddy Cooper.

“It’s my dad’s name,” Jughead admits eventually. “And his dad’s name. I’m the third.”

“That’s sweet,” she says.

He scoffs at her assumption. “There is nothing remotely sweet about my family,” he says, tucking his hands back into his pockets. “I don’t know, I guess I just wanted my name to be my own, as stupid as Jughead is.”

She can understand that. Elizabeth, she knows as well as anyone else, is hardly an uncommon name. It’s half of why she’s gone by Betty for most of her life – as far as she knows she’s Riverdale’s only Betty.

But she’s far from Riverdale’s only Elizabeth.

“I get it,” she tells him. “And for the record, I don’t think your name is stupid.”

“You actually sounded like you meant that this time!”

When she laughs, he joins in, too. It’s a nice sound – the sound of her laughter mixed with someone else’s besides the silence. It’s been a while since she’s heard it, a song with an underlying bass, a melody with a harmony, and she finds herself thinking then that she wouldn’t mind hearing a little more of it.

“So do you just carry this around with you in your bag?”

“No,” he admits sheepishly. “I, uh – I didn’t know what to expect from dinner. Archie said Veronica was cooking and I thought – I thought I’d have to go to Pop’s after. I figured I’d give it to you if you were there.”

She laughs gently at the message between the lines. “Those were the right instincts,” Betty admits. “Veronica doesn’t really cook.”

“I wouldn’t say that. The potatoes were pretty good.”

She smiles, but just barely and just to herself – she’ll let Veronica take the win here. “I’ll tell her you said so,” Betty says. “Thank you, Jughead. For the book. And for walking me home.”

He looks shy, she thinks as he shrugs, bashful even. “Deal’s a deal.”

In the beat of space that she thinks neither of them knows what to do with or how best to fill, Betty runs her hand over the flowers closest to her, fluttering her fingertips over the silken petals; a whisper instead of a true touch. She’s always loved these – the perfect symmetry of the pear-shaped petals, folding and fanning over each other, the vibrancy of the purples and blues coming together, the softness, the delicateness. They’re among her mother’s favorites, but she hadn’t planted them for herself until recently.

She doesn’t expect his hand to join hers over the periwinkles, and when it does, she almost snatches her hand back towards herself in shock.

Instead, she holds her hand still and steady, watching carefully as he mimics her motions, running the pads of his fingertips over the petals with a slowness and gentleness she hadn’t expected him to know how to employ.

And for the most fleeting of moments, one that she doesn’t fully understand or know the origins of, she thinks about brushing her hand over his.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Betty,” he says eventually, dropping his hand back down to his side.

She shakes her head in an effort to draw herself out of her daze. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”

“I know,” Jughead says, smiling. “But where else am I supposed to eat?”

“Well, there’s-” she pauses, thinking. _Who is she kidding_ – there’s nowhere else halfway decent to eat. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Betty leans over her white fence, watching him fade slowly down the path she knows so well.

 

* * *

  

She’s lying in bed and watching a lone pair of headlights swing through her thin curtains, sleep miles and miles away when the light catches onto the corner of his book, the last letters of his name barely within her field of vision.

 _J.P. Jones_ , she reads, holding the book above her head and running her fingers over the embossed letters, stilling over the P.

_Pendleton._

_‘I don’t need to know her middle name to know that I love her,’_ Archie had told her long ago.

 _No_ , she supposes now, Archie hadn’t needed to know something so trivial to love Veronica with his whole heart. No one does. A middle name has nothing to do with compatibility, with familiarity, integrity. It has nothing to do with friendship and it certainly doesn’t have a thing to do with love.

But still, Betty thinks as she sets his book back on the nightstand – she likes that she knows his just the same.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Periwinkle, amongst others, symbolizes blossoming friendship.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> "All the Stars" - the Wailin Jennys


	4. Queen Anne's Lace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to bugggghead for sharing her fabulous thoughts and lending her eyes! Which caught many a word I just plain skipped over.

 

_Go away somewhere all bright and new_

 

Jughead blinks twice as he faces the day from his door, the first time to adjust to the sunlight, the second to the town.

He likes Riverdale in the mornings, he decides. In its early wakefulness, this particular part of world around him is pretty – charming, even. There’s a pleasant calm that comes from seeing the sun lazily dip in diagonals over awnings, painting oblong shards across the pavement. It’s slower out here – slow in a way that sets in within his bones and drags and pulls at his limbs as he moves.

But, he finds, he doesn’t mind the slowness.

He follows the path of her directions to the garage – across the street and a block down from the motel – and when he recites them to back himself, he’s surprised it’s in her voice. She has a nice voice, he thinks, clear and soothing, devoid of any hoarseness or sharpness. It’s a little lower than he’d expected it to be, but he’d also thought, frankly, that she’d have a voice a little more like Veronica’s – shrill and piercingly sharp.

She doesn’t, though, not at all in fact – hers is soft and liltingly gentle, perfectly suited for soothing nightmares and kind encouragement.

Betty Cooper has a nice voice.

 _And,_ he thinks, _there are worse things in this world than having a voice like hers stuck in his head._

 

* * *

 

The only garage in town is exactly where she’d said it’d be.

 _Mason Motors_ , he reads off the faded, hand-painted sign – the garage doesn’t belong to her family, either.

He doesn’t know why he’d thought that it would. If her family had been forced to sell the prized newsletter of a newspaper they’d cherished for generations, then surely any garage bearing their name would’ve gone long before that.

He’s no stranger to garages – he’s known more than a few of them in his lifetime, but he still treads into this one carefully, shuffling instead of stepping across the threshold. This isn’t his territory, these aren’t his people, and that alone calls for caution.

“Betty?” he calls out, cringing as his voice bounces around the walls. It’s been a while since there’s been a woman’s name on his lips, and for it to come back to him in the form of a jarringly warped echo throws him for a moment. “It’s me – I mean, Jughead.”

It’s a little presumptive of him to think she knows what his voice sounds like, he figures.

“I’m here!” she responds, ponytail bobbing up from behind a truck bed before the rest of her joins it. “You made it.”

“You sound doubtful.”

Which, based on his track record, is right on the money.

“Honestly, I didn’t know if you’d come. I thought eight might’ve been a little early.”

“I mean, it wasn’t easy,” Jughead jokes, looking to a particularly interesting corner of the water-marked ceiling when she unstraps her overalls and shimmies them down the length of her body in front of him. He doesn’t know what he’d expected exactly, but he thanks god that she has something on underneath.

“You get used to it,” Betty says, tossing her oil-patched overalls to the side and revealing in full a simple blue dress dotted with little daisy prints in his line of sight. It’s pretty on her, he thinks.

Or rather, _she’s_ pretty in _it_.

Her Pop’s uniform isn’t unattractive on her, not by a long shot, but he thinks that she pulls off her non-work clothes particularly well. They make her seem a little more alive.

“Coffee?” she asks, pointing in the direction of a bare-bones plastic table holding an ancient, sad looking coffee maker. “It tastes terrible, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Oh. Sure, thanks.”

“Help yourself. I, uh, I like the notebook,” she says, the hint of a playful smile starting at the corners of her mouth. “Very studious of you.”

“Oh,” he repeats, embarrassed as he looks down at the ring-bound book in his hand. Truthfully, he’s not sure why he brought it.  “Thanks. So, is this stop one of the tour or-”

_“Elizabeth! The crescent wrench!”_

“Oh crap,” Betty says, eyes widening at the voice as she pats down the front of her dress. “Sorry, give me a sec.”

Jughead watches as she hurries down the expanse of the garage, swooping up what he thinks must be the wrench in question as her feet flurry. From his vantage point, he can’t make out one way or the other who she kneels and talks quietly to, save a pair of stout-looking legs poking out from under the front bumper.

Not wanting to intrude on what he thinks might be a private moment, he helps himself to the bad coffee she’d pointed out on the table, littered with tools he knows he’s seen before but can’t name if his life depended on it, and a stack of paper filters sitting on top of a can of Folgers.

There’s a line of photos hanging over the coffee maker that distracts him as he pours the bitter smelling coffee into a paper Dixie cup. They’re all faded at the corners in varying degrees and heavily marked with the ghosts of fingerprints past. They warm him, these telltale signs, in a way the coffee he’s holding now doesn’t – these few photos are loved and cherished, looked upon countless times with only the fondest of smiles.

The newest of the photos, the one least caked with a heavy film of oil and dirt is of two red-headed twins that makes him feel immediately sticky. He has absolutely no problem with children – he’s watched over his kid sister often enough to know how to interact with kids without feeling the waves of unease or stifling boredom he’s heard others complain about.

But these two have their hands held up to the camera, covered down to their wrists in jam; and while it makes for a perfectly lovely Kodak moment, it also makes him feel like he needs a wet wipe.

He easily identifies the third photo down the line as Betty with a front tooth missing, and that her ponytail has been her trademark since she was six, maybe seven has him smiling to herself. She’s bordered on either side by a blonde girl with two headbands stuck on her head and her arms flung out wide, and a boy who he might’ve mistaken for Betty at first glance if not for his very blue, duck-print onesie.

Two girls, a boy, and a white picket fence. _If there’d ever been a definition of the American Dream,_ he thinks, _then the Coopers are it._

Their money troubles aside.

“Those are my dad’s,” Betty’s voice comes, right into his ear and so suddenly that he over-jostles his cup. “Oh, sorry.”

He shakes off the liquid from his hand, catching the knife edge of a fond, if not wistful smile as she spares a brief glance at the photos. “It’s fine. Your dad – he uh, works here?” he asks, unable to reign in the slight panic laced in his voice.

He doesn’t do well with parents. They tend to not like him.

Or his bike.

Jughead follows her the direction of her pointed finger as it jabs at the air to same the pair of stout legs still sticking out from under the truck she’d been talking to earlier. “That’s him over there. Did you want to meet him?”

It takes everything in him not to blurt out the quickest, most emphatic _‘no’_ in his arsenal, and fleetingly, he reminds himself that if she insists on him meeting the Cooper patriarch, he’s not to mention the father of the two jam-handed, red-head kids.

“Did you want me to meet him?” Jughead asks eventually, voice measured. He will if she wants him to, he figures – it’s the polite thing to do – but he’d really rather not.

She studies him just as closely, looking between the faceless man still hard at work under the car and back to him, lip twisting in thought as she does.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says eventually and decidedly, leading the way out of the garage. “We’re wasting the morning.”

 

* * *

 

He’s glad that she monopolizes the conversation because he isn’t quite sure what to say to her.

He spends half of their slow saunter down Main Street lost in his head and only half-hearing what she’s saying about when the Post Office first opened, and how the town had vetoed changing the General Store’s name to Convenience Store three years ago.

A long and protracted battle, he gathers.

“How’d you end up voting?” Jughead bumbles out when she looks to him, eyes wide and expectant for his input.

“General Store,” Betty says, smiling in what he thinks is her satisfaction with his question. “Convenience Store felt a little too, I don’t know... impersonal to me. I like the idea of a store having everything I’d need generally, as crazy as that thing might be. I like the name of the store _reflecting_ that.”

“But does the general store only have things that fall under the umbrella of convenience?” he asks. “I mean, I like the idea, too, but I’d probably vote for the name that fits the store itself better.”

“I don’t know,” Betty challenges, lips quirking. “Would you call powdered goat’s milk an item of convenience?”

He nods at her once in admittance of his defeat, feeling his own hint of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Fair enough,” Jughead says, and when she nods in triumph, he thinks she just might be the type that doesn’t like to lose.

He can understand that – it’s not like he likes to, either.

She falls quiet after her little victory, and that nagging twinge he’s been nursing throughout their slow mosey down the street settles into his stomach again.

He isn’t sure if it’s her quiet intelligence and thoughtfulness; or the fact that it’s just him and her in broad daylight walking around the streets of her town out on display for everyone to see,; or even that he doesn’t think she’s particularly unpleasant to look at that has that feeling twisting in him now, but he’s sure it’s one of those.

 _He’s nervous,_ he realizes as she inhales deeply next to him.

_She’s making him nervous._

And especially today, without the wear and tear of her shift written across her face, without the tiredness of a day’s worth of running on her feet sagging into her shoulders. She looks different, she _feels_ different than the her he’s come to know in the past few days.

“That’s Riverdale High over there,” Betty says, pointing towards the nondescript brick building in the near distance, snapping his attention back to planet Earth and out of the clouds. Her ponytail swings enthusiastically against her back as she angles her shoulders towards him. “Riverdale High the First was built in 1899, but it burned down in 1938. The second shut down for a few years during the war but it’s been there ever since.”

“Alma mater?”

“Mmm hmm,” she hums. “My parents’, my great-grandparents’, Archie’s parents’, etcetera, etcetera – they all went there.”

“But not Veronica,” he quips.

Betty laughs back lightly. “But not Veronica.”

Jughead watches as she looks on the plain brick building with the hint of a smile, tilting her head in what he thinks might be fondness. He’s seen the school before her pointing it out to him today – he doesn’t think there’s much in Riverdale Betty could really show him that he _hasn’t_ , he’s realizing now – but seeing it now, through the lens of her history, colors in what had simply been a black and white building before, at least metaphorically speaking.

“I used to be the editor for the paper back then.”

 _Pride_ , he realizes as he looks over at her. It’s the first time he’s seen it on her, but this is what pride on her looks like.

“Look at you,” he praises lightly.

“The _Blue and Gold,”_ she reminisces. “It was this sad four-page newsletter that used Comic Sans and clip art before I got my hands on it. I can’t even call it a newspaper, honestly, but...”

“But what?” he picks up when she trails off.

Betty sighs then, so greatly and deeply that he wonders if he shouldn’t have pushed the subject at all. “Nothing,” she says eventually, quietly. “It’s just a little pathetic of me to label _those_ as my glory days. But I loved the _Blue and Gold_. I don’t know that anyone but my parents read it, and I’m not even sure that they did. But I was the one that decided where this or that article went. I was the one who picked the fonts and I was in charge of making sure the paper got to every door, even if it ended up in the trash. I miss that sometimes.”

“I don’t think it’s pathetic,” Jughead says gently. “You had a good time in high school. You did something that you felt was important and that made you feel important – I doubt that many people can say the same. I definitely can’t. You should enjoy that.”

He doesn’t get an answer, but he does get a bright, honest smile that he thinks is just as good.

“You didn’t go to college?” he hears himself asking.

She shakes her head tersely, and maybe even with a hint of embarrassment, too. “I took online classes, mostly in business management and journalism. But no, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you want to leave Riverdale?”

“No one in my family has ever wanted to,” Betty tells him, turning to him slowly. “They’re so... _proud_ of this town. My great-grandfather was one of its founders – my family, my _dad_ – he’s never let go of that. And my mom likes feeling superior to other people – founding families and all that. Riverdale is as far as their world goes, and they’re happy with that.”

“But you don’t seem to be,” he presses gently. “Are you?”

“I wanted to leave Riverdale,” she admits. “And I wanted to go to college. But life just – got in the way.”

Jughead thinks back to the embarrassment that had strained her entire body when she’d admitted those two words to him that hadn’t made an ounce of sense at all coming from her – _money troubles_. He remembers the way she’d stared down at her feet and almost bumped right into him, the way her voice had grown flat and devoid of emotion or feeling as she’d relayed the story he knows she hadn’t wanted to share with him.

He can understand that – money troubles are as life as it gets.

How someone like _him_ can get tied up and tangled in something like money troubles is hardly far from unimaginable – he might even go so far as to call it predictable.

But when it comes to Betty, with the neat and pragmatic ponytail and the work ethic that puts everyone else’s to shame – he thinks that it _is_ completely unpredictable.

Granted, he doesn’t know much about her. She might have a secret shoe-habit her worn Converse don’t betray for all he knows. Maybe she’d forgotten to buy home insurance and become yet another victim to termites – he’d once watched a documentary about how those little shits could ring up tens of thousands of dollars in damage and he’d nearly fallen off his bed in shock.

 _They’re bugs._ Just _bugs_.

He doesn’t know much about her. But what he does know so far is that her and the concept of money troubles doesn’t quite add up.

But he also knows better than to dig any deeper there – it’d be the last thing he’d welcome questions about if he were the one in her shoes.

“So, uh, does anyone actually use the laundromat?” Jughead asks instead, tipping his head in the store front’s direction as they walk past it.

“You’d be surprised,” Betty says, and he thinks he sees gratefulness cross her face at the change in subject. “Honestly, you might even want to take your stuff here. I’ve heard that the machines at the motel leave soap in your clothes. Mr. Muggs hasn’t changed them since the nineties. Ninety-one, I think.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t you want to write that down?” she asks, nodding towards his notebook.

“What, that the machines at the motel are as old as I am?”

“Sure,” Betty says shrugging. “You haven’t written anything yet. What else goes in there?”

He shrugs, not knowing how to answer one way or the other. “The important things,” he says simply. “The things I don’t want to forget.”

“Wow, so nothing I’ve said so far has been either important or worth remembering?”

“I didn’t mean it like-”

“Relax, Jughead,” she says, and he’s distracted for a moment by the way his dumb name sounds altogether less so in her voice, lightened with humor. “I was kidding.”

If she can let that part of her guard down and joke and kid with him, then he should try to do the same – let go, even if it’s just for a half a breath of a moment.

“You tell stories well,” Jughead says. “I don’t need to write them down to remember them.”

He isn’t sure – it could be the way the sun angles and hits her face when she turns to face him, maybe catching the red cast of the barbershop’s pole shadowing across her cheeks – but he thinks he just might’ve seen her blush.

He remembers how she’d turned away from him, wearing her mortification so plainly on her face that day he’d called her out for having gossiped about him with Veronica, how the color on her cheeks had brought the entirety of her back to life, even in the midst of a double-shift.

She isn’t trapped within the confines of a sixteen hour shift this time, but that swoop of color on her cheekbones still does exactly what it had that day – add a little life to her, spark a flame of that fire that he thinks she just might be guarding within her.

“Can I ask you something?” Betty starts, ponytail brushing against her back as she turns to him.

“Depends,” he jokes, and when she narrows her eyes at him, he rolls his right back at her. “Go ahead.”

“That night at Pop’s – you said what made you pick Riverdale over all the other sleepy towns was the Nowhere sign. You said you wanted to see what was here.”

“Mmm hmm,” he agrees slowly.

“So – what exactly _is_ here? What’s in Nowhere?”

“Trying to run me out of town?”

“Not at all,” she tells him, and so emphatically that it has him biting back a smile he thinks might be all too wide in answer to her three simple words.

He matches up his footfalls with hers, turning his fidgeting hands into his pockets as he does. She’s still in her Converse, he notices – the worn, stained pair she shuffles around in during her shift – and he’s surprised that they look oddly charming alongside her sundress.

The dress, her shoes – it all looks very her.

It’s a concept he can’t exactly put into words but that he just knows as he’s looking at her now – a little rough around the edges, a little worn down, but still bright.

Still pretty.

“I was in Chicago before this. My sister’s a junior at Illinois,” Jughead explains, meandering through his words as slowly as they’re walking. “She’s backpacking across Europe now.”

“What, alone?”

“With some guy named Breah who has a penchant for not showering and lemongrass incense, but thanks for the reminder,” he tells her, but lightly in case she misses his sarcasm.

Betty laughs, so he figures she doesn’t.

“And now I’m here. You know, I thought about staying in Chicago for the summer. Honestly, it would’ve been cheaper. And probably more practical, too,” he tells her, not entirely sure where his sudden candor stems from. “But I woke up one morning and I just… felt like the world was closing in on me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

And when she looks at him, head softly tilted, and expression encapsulating the entire spectrum of mournful understanding and empathy, he knows, possibly better than he’s known anything before, that it does.

“It feels different out here,” Jughead continues. “There isn’t that premonition. There isn’t that confinement.” At that, she snorts wholeheartedly. “For me, anyhow. I don’t know – I just… feel like nothing bad is following me into a place like this. I feel like nothing bad happens here.”

_Because not much happens here, period._

She considers him silently as the end of the road draws near, the light tapping of her footsteps keeping a gentle beat to his shuffling. He thinks about picking up his feet and walking a little more assuredly, but there’s a part of him that likes the sound of the mismatch right now.

“It must be a nice feeling,” Betty tells him eventually, and even though her voice is full of earnestness and honestly, he still hears the words she doesn’t say, as clearly as if she’d spoken them.

_But I don’t feel it, too._

He shrugs in an attempt to brush off some of the heaviness of the moment he’d unwittingly waded them into. “Anyhow, I guess that’s what’s here. A modicum of peace and quiet in an otherwise loud world.”

 

* * *

 

At the end of the block, feeling more than a little stupid for essentially asking her to show him down the one street in town, he turns to her with what he’s sure are two pink circles on his cheeks. It’s not that he hasn’t appreciated her history or that he hasn’t enjoyed the twenty minutes he’s spent at her side, but it all feels a little unnecessary now.

“So, thanks,” Jughead starts, not knowing what else to say. “This was a great tour – super informative and-”

“What?”

“Isn’t this the end?”

“Sure, of the _street_ ,” Betty says gently. “I know there might not be much here, but this road isn’t _all_ we have. There’s a little more to Riverdale, if you have the time to see it.”

It’s back again, that nagging, nervous feeling. But now, it starts at the base of his neck and heats him all the way up and around to his hairline. He’d assumed after the night he’d walked her home – her words, not his – that she was done detailing the history of the town’s white picket fences and quaint little farmhouses and Cape Cods and that she wouldn’t want to show him those again.

Jughead hopes he hasn’t offended her by assuming that now, but then again, she doesn’t strike him as the type this suffers from easy-offense, either.

Case in point – he thinks she’s looking at him with something very much like a challenge in her eyes as she leans just slightly towards the direction of the unknown. And with that, there’s that hint of fight, of fire he’d seen in her earlier. The fight and fire, he thinks, suits her well, too.

“Lead the way,” he says. “I have all the time in the world.”

 

* * *

 

With her heels barely brushing against the river’s edge, she turns back to him, shielding her eyes from the sun with a hand held against her forehead.

“What do you think?” she calls to him.

He treads his way to her side, feeling the steepness of the slope working against his calves as he traverses down towards the river bank. “I think that I didn’t know Riverdale had a river.”

“Didn’t you wonder where the name came from?”

“Not really,” he says, shrugging. “Why is anything called anything? Why is Chicago, Chicago, why is Toledo, Toledo?”

“One of the settlers thought it was easy to pronounce and liked the sound of it,” she says, looking to him with a smile wider than he’s ever seen on her before. “And because there was no other city in the continental U.S. called Toledo.”

“Get out.”

“The settler was a merchant,” she adds, amused. “You don’t believe me?”

“Should I?”

“Yes,” she says plainly. “Look it up if you want. There’s a legend that Washington Irving went to Toledo in Spain and suggested the name to his brother, but that isn’t the reigning popular opinion. I have no clue about Chicago, though.”

“How do you know all that?”

“See, there’s this magic thing called the Internet,” she quips before trailing off and shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t know. I remember reading an article a few years ago about Toledo – it probably came up there. It’s not like it’s hidden information.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask out of pure instinct and reflex – _who are you,_ he wants to know. _And why read an article about Toledo, of all the places in the world?_

But he bites his question back and asks one that he thinks is probably more appropriate for someone he’s known for less than a week.

“So, what’s the deal with this place?”

“Well, it’s a river,” she starts slowly, teasingly.

“Thanks.”

Betty laughs before her voice drops back into seriousness. “Sweetwater River marks the northern border of town. That’s Greendale over there,” she says, pointing over to the opposite side of the river. “Which reminds me – if you ever want Chinese food, Greendale’s your go-to. Or pizza. Or Indian food.”

“So basically, everything other than Pop’s.”

“More or less.”

It’s the first time he’s really been hit with just how small her town is. It hasn’t really settled in with him before this – he hasn’t wanted for a thing so far. A place to put his head, a place to write, a place to get a decent burger – more than decent if he’s being honest. It’s all been at his fingertips.

But he’s a guy who’s only known how to survive within the melting pot of a city and who enjoys variety every now then. It isn’t all that often, but there are times where he craves more than a patty sandwiched between two pieces of bread, too. That he has to go to the next town over for a simple pizza hits him hard over the head, almost disorientingly so.

 _This town,_ he thinks as he lines up the tips of his shoes with the river’s edge, _truly is very goddamn tiny._

And still, he thinks, just as he hadn’t minded the slow saunter of a morning that had greeted him at eight a.m., he doesn’t mind this either.

 

* * *

 

He spends the time he should be using to observe the river observing her instead.

There’s a difference in the way she approaches this particular corner of her world, with an easy unhurriedness woven into her careful movements, and a peaceful kind of languidness that he’d never know her to be capable of if he only knew the version of her that willingly takes on double shifts at Pop’s to fill her already busy days.

Out here, like this, breathing in slowly and deeply, she reminds him of the version of her that had cupped the periwinkles outside her little house in her curved fingers, gently and with all the softness in the world, like she’d been holding the finest jewels and crystals instead of plain old flowers.

Jughead tries not to overtly stare at the silhouette she carves as she holds her hand out against the current; instead, he focuses on the froth that climbs and bubbles against her hand and the way the water pulls at and flutters her fingertips for her as they sway against the current.

He can’t remember the last time he’d been around water like this, just him and it, no tourists on his either side snapping pictures and threatening to inadvertently whack him with a selfie stick.

“What?” she calls over to him, shaking him out of his trance.

“You like it out here.”

Betty tugs her hand from the water and pats her palm, then the back of her fingers against the grass. “I do,” she says honestly, her voice dipping low and liltingly quiet. “You know, when we were kids, we used to catch lightning bugs out here during the summer.”

“We being?” he asks, even though he knows at least one member of her grand _‘we’._

“Archie,” she says. _And there it is._ “Kevin, Moose. Reggie back in the day, too, but he swallowed one when we were thirteen and never bothered coming around after that. I think it traumatized him.”

“How dumb do you have to be?”

“Mmm,” she hums, smiling, and he knows that’s all he’s going to get from her on that front; a quiet agreement without words, because it’s simply not in her nature to say anything close to malice even towards the dimwit who swallowed a bug known quite literally for lighting up the night sky.

“We still come out here sometimes for picnics and what have you’s,” Betty continues. “I haven’t caught lightning bugs in years, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think anyone really wants to anymore. Archie would if I asked, but traipsing through nature to spend time with the bugs isn’t really Veronica’s scene.”

 _Truer words,_ he supposes.

“So why not come and catch them yourself?”

He wishes there was some kind of playbook for what to say and what not to when Betty Cooper’s concerned because as it is, he’s walked into hot water with her more times than one this morning alone. She’s recovered well each time, and this moment now is no exception, but there’s that same confusion and storminess that clouds over her every time he’s ventured in the wrong direction, like she’s stuck somewhere in the past, present, and future at all once.

“It isn’t really a solo activity,” Betty says eventually. “Or maybe it is for some people, but it isn’t one I’d-”

There’s a loud, piercing sound that interrupts as it jumps out of the little bag at her side, the same, standard ringtone that he’d set for himself for calls and alarms, and any other inane noise his phone deigns necessary to his life. He’s never really paid much attention to the tone itself before, but hearing it now juxtaposed against the whispers of the world as it clears its voice to speak to the day, it sounds oddly different.

 _It’s annoying_ , he finds himself thinking now. It’s ugly and artificial stacked against the naturalness his ear is currently bending towards.

“I should get this,” Betty says, cutting off the sound with a quick swipe of her thumb.

“By all means.”

“What’s up, Dad?” he hears her ask, followed by a pause and a confused look as she edges away from him in protection of her call. “No, I’m at Sweetwater, I don’t have– Dad, _why_ would I take the wrench? Did you check the-”

And that’s all he catches.

Jughead watches as she winds her way back towards the main road, making sure she’s far enough away before he flips open the notebook he’s rolled up and stuck into the back pocket of his jeans. Technically, what he’s writing isn’t any kind of great secret, but he’d rather his notes stay that way – his and his alone.

He thinks she’d understand, though – she’s wandering near the edge of the road now for the exact same reason.

Checking behind him once more, he uncaps his pen and begins to write, letters uneven and rough even by his standards as he balances the book against his knee.

He has downright childish handwriting, he notices even as he carefully prints the words; slightly slanted and large, not at all like Betty’s elegant, loopy script he’s caught from time to time on tickets that she’s clipped and turned on Pop’s order wheel.

 

* * *

 

“What are you writing?”

 _“Jesus!”_ Jughead starts at the sound of her voice in his ear, tossing and dropping his pen in the process. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Jumpy, much?”

_“Very.”_

“Okay,” she says slowly, voice carefully working its way through the syllables. “Sorry.”

He sighs, wishing he hadn’t come at her so firmly. “It’s fine. I just… I scare easily.”

It’s not exactly untrue – he does, but really only when it comes to people approaching him from behind and out of nowhere.

“Noted,” she says, but softly and with more understanding than he’s heard from anyone in a while. “Anyhow, what’s the one very important thing you’ve learned so far?” she asks, rising up on her toes in an attempt to peer over into his notebook. “Is it for your book?”

“That,” he says, holding the notebook out of her reach as she attempts to stretch for it, “is my business and not yours.”

“Ah, so it _is_ for the book.”

“No,” he says pointedly. “It’s for me, and it’s about _Riverdale_.”

“We should really talk royalties, too,” Betty continues, brushing past his comment with ease as she dips her hand back into the water before smoothing it over the few flyaways on her head. “When the things I’m telling you end up becoming some kind of bestseller, I’m demanding three percent.” Her voice is playful, and were he another person, he thinks that he just might’ve broached the idea of her possibly flirting with him.

“Just three percent?” he asks. “That’s it?”

“I mean, I have to leave something for the author to support his burger habit, don’t I? Since he can’t cook,” she responds, smirk playing at her lips and hands coming to her hips.

“Very kind of you.”

She laughs before turning away from him. “I’ll let you finish your very secret sentence.”

Jughead stands there at the edge of the riverbank, pen poised over his notebook and ready to write. It’s such an inconsequential, unimportant fact about him – that his cooking claim to fame is that he can accidentally evaporate an entire pot of water in an attempt to boil it – but he hadn’t expected her to remember it.

Nor had he expected her easy confidence in him either. He knows enough of her by now to know that she’s extremely careful, if not meticulous to a fault with her words, and her slip of tongue hadn’t escaped him.

Not if his not-yet-existent book became a bestseller.

_When._

He supposes that he really shouldn’t have expected anything less than goodness and kindness from someone her little town heralds as the very definition those words, but that she’s sending even a little bit of it his way has that nervousness he’d been feeling before rush back in spades.

Jughead looks back over his shoulder, watching the wind softly flutter and balloon the skirt of her sundress as she wanders back towards the road for a moment before turning back to his notebook.

 _She hasn’t caught lightning bugs in years_ , he reads back to himself before finishing his sentence.

_And I think she wants to._

 

* * *

 

She’s looking towards the sky, a soft, peaceful kind of expression settling across her face when he makes his way back to her.

“All set?” she asks, still teasing.

He can play at this game, too. “All set,” he repeats back, holding up his notebook next to his wide, affected smile. “Wrote down _all_ my secrets.”

He thinks that she might just come back with another smart retort, but she simply nods over at him. “I’m glad,” Betty tells him before starting back down the road and leaving him to follow.

“So that was your favorite place in Riverdale?” he asks, catching up and lining his steps up with hers.

“What, Sweetwater River?” she asks. “I love the river, and especially during the summer. But I wouldn’t necessarily call it my favorite place.”

“What is, then? Home?” he guesses, remembering the way she’d so vehemently defended the concept that night at Archie and Veronica’s dinner.

She’s so determined to look straight ahead when she answers him with her face held so firmly still, so devoid of any indication as to what she might be thinking.

“I do love my house,” she answers slowly, thinking through each word. He can’t place why, but he’s not sure that he fully believes her. “I bought it a few years ago. It’s small and I didn’t build it like Archie built his either, but it’s mine. I worked for it, and there’s something nice about that, you know? Coming home every day to something that’s just yours. But I don’t know that I’d call it my favorite place in Riverdale, either.”

It fills him with an unexpected kind of sadness when she admits that – that after everything, after how hard she’d worked to put her name on her mailbox, after how staunchly she’d defended the concepts of house and home to him – it’s, at the end of the day, still not her favorite place in her one-horse town.

He wonders why.

“So it’s not Sweetwater River, it’s not your house with the white fence – Pop’s?”

“I think I spend too much time there for it to be my favorite place in Riverdale. I love it, though,” she says, voice light with amusement. “I don’t know that you’d find anyone in Riverdale who doesn’t have a soft spot for Pop’s in their heart. We became who we are there, for better or worse.”

That, he can very much understand.

“Why the curiosity?” Betty asks.

Jughead shrugs, feeling that telltale creeping hand of embarrassment grip the back of his neck again. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I just wanted to know where exactly in this town earned your stamp of approval. There has to be somewhere here you love more than the rest.”

“There is,” she says, voice lost to what he thinks might be a time past. “Did you want to see it?”

 _Yes_ , his mind answers for him _. If there’s anywhere I want to go, it’s there._

“Only if you have the time,” Jughead answers diplomatically.

He sees her answer coming from miles away, but even so, it does nothing in the way of tampering his smile.

“I have all the time in the world,” she echoes back.

 

* * *

 

She suggests taking her car since they’re near her house and she has errands to do later.

It’s her word, _errands_. His version usually sounds a little more uncouth, one that goes something to the tune of _‘I have shit to do,’_ and her politeness almost makes him laugh.

It’s been more than a while since he’s had anyone drive him anywhere and he’s halfway around the car making his way to the driver’s seat before he reminds himself it isn’t his seat to take.

“Nice car,” he comments as she breezes back down the street she’d so carefully given him the history of earlier.

“Thanks,” Betty says, running her hand once over the wheel in an affectionate gesture.

“This is, what, a ’70? ’69?” he asks. He has, putting it kindly, absolutely no interest in cars and the decades they harken back to, but he’s hung around enough garages to have at least a baseline knowledge of them.

“You’re close – it’s a ’65. But that’s not why you’re asking,” Betty says. “You’re wondering how a girl who works a double-shift at the local greasy spoon can afford a car like this, right?”

In not so many words, yes, he had been.

“I didn’t say that.”

_But now that you mention it._

“It’s okay. I’d wonder, too. Under normal circumstances, there’s no way I could afford something like this. It was a birthday present from my dad. Sixteen,” she explains. “It was barely hanging on by imagination when I got it – this thing didn’t even look like a car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom more pissed than she was the moment she realized my dad got me scrap metal for my birthday.”

“Why?”

Betty shrugs before looking over to him. “Grease monkey wasn’t one of the things she wanted her daughter to be, not that I cared. My dad and I spent a whole year fixing this car up.”

She has different tones, he realizes as he listens to her recount her youth. Her voice is soft and sweet now, but he’s heard it take on an edge before, too – at Archie, at him, even. He’s heard it mock and chide, and fall into deep seriousness, too.

He finds himself wondering how much of her voice he hasn’t yet heard.

“I spent a lot of time with my dad that year,” Betty continues, one hand sliding off the wheel and onto her lap, tapping gently to the beat from the radio. “We don’t have that much in common other than this. It’s why I go to the garage on weekends when I can – I don’t really know how else to spend time with him. I think he not so secretly wishes I’d been a son instead of a daughter. Someone more like Archie, you know? I’m glad we have this – this car, the memory of building it together. I think it makes him happy when he sees me in it.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” he says. “That you spend time with him while you can.”

“Are you close with your dad?” she asks, briefly flicking a glance from the road over to him.

“He’s dead,” Jughead says flatly.

“Oh,” Betty says slowly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“It happened a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t hurt,” she offers understandingly. “It’s a horrible thing, isn’t it? Death?”

He shrugs, looking to the blur of leaves passing by in an effort to avoid looking at her. It’s never been his favorite topic to discuss – his father, death, his history – and he’d rather not get into it with her now.

“It’s just another part of life,” he says simply.

“That’s true. But I’m still sorry.”

He wonders then if it takes any energy on her part to be this sincere. It isn’t something that he’s used to – all that kindness, regardless of the case, both from him and directed at him – but he’d always thought that was just a product of adulthood. A harsh world begets jadedness, and that, he’d always thought, was like death – simply another part of life.

He thinks now that his vein of thinking might not be entirely true. He doesn’t know much about it or her, but he figures that Betty Cooper has had the world dole out its fair share of heartache and hardship on her plate. But she’s still here with that massive heart of hers that he’s sure bleeds for entirely too many people.

She’s still here with sympathy and kindness for him – taking time out of her very busy days for him, the perfect stranger.

 _It must take energy,_ he concludes.

That, or the world doesn’t aggrieve everyone as much as he’d assumed.

“We were close, my dad and I,” he tells her, wanting to give her at least the smallest of somethings for her effort to reach out. “Or as close as we could’ve been given the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

“My dad was part of a-”

Jughead trails off, replacing the remainder of a sentence with something between a yelp and a scream as he’s unceremoniously flung flush against the car door when Betty rounds a corner without warning and without even the pretense of slowing down.

“Holy shit, are you crazy?” he asks, one hand anchored firmly on the dashboard. “Slow down!”

“What?”

“You’re driving like a maniac!”

Betty frowns over at him, corners of her mouth tugging down harshly. “What’s wrong with how I drive?”

“You just flew around that corner,” he says, twisting to look back at the road she’d just torn down. “If anyone had been coming the other way, you’d have been roadkill. _I’d_ have been roadkill.”

“Good thing no one ever comes around that corner, then,” Betty muses, shrugging. “This is how everyone here drives. You should write that down,” she says, removing a hand from the wheel he’d really rather her keep firmly on there to tap twice on his notebook. “Since you’re writing things down about Riverdale. That’s a very important fact.”

“What, that people in Riverdale enjoy gambling with their lives? Are you sure that’s not just a you-thing?”

She waits until he’s looking right at her before she rolls her eyes at him. _“No,”_ Betty says, and so pointedly that he can’t help but laugh. “What?”

Jughead shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, because he thinks the alternative – the _truth_ – might just end with him tossed out on the side of the road.

The truth being that her and that indignant look on her face are strangely endearing.

“Trust me,” Betty says, pulling the car to a stop with just as little warning as she’d given him about the corner she’d barreled around. “No one ever comes out here.”

She throws her car door open and leans down to unlace her shoes before setting her bare feet down on the warm ground.

 

* * *

 

“This?” he asks, sliding his shoe between the fence slats and climbing up to join her on the fence’s top rung. “This is your favorite place in town?”

“I guess it’s not technically _in_ town so much as it is on the outskirts, but semantics. I love it out here.”

“So, of all the places in Riverdale,” he starts, carefully avoiding stepping on her toes, “why here?”

The smile that blooms across her face is unlike any other he’s seen on her before; one that’s more beautiful than the rest, he thinks, because of the depth of the honesty she uses to support it.

“This place is just mine. It’s where I feel like I can think. Breathe,” she tells him. “Archie and I used to race here all the time. There were wildflowers here once – thousands of them. Archie thinks we trampled them to death.”

“I highly doubt even you two ran over an entire field of flowers.”

“Probably not,” Betty agrees. “I used to think there wasn’t anything more beautiful than this place back then. It looks so different now. But I still love it out here, even without the flowers.”

There’s such a wistfulness and reverent mourning in her voice as she recounts what once was, something very adjacent to a sadness that he finds himself wishing wholeheartedly wouldn’t sully her voice the way it does now.

“Well, they’re not all gone,” Jughead says, pushing himself off the fence and wincing at the visible imprint his boots push into the ground; he’s sure that in no way helps build back the picture of the place she’d once loved.

He tracks the dirt below his feet, scanning carefully for any hint or sign of the flowers and life that she’d once loved. It’s hard to find, he realizes as he paces away from her; the flowers are obscured, woven in between strands of grass and overpowered, but he’s always been good at finding what’s hidden.

So he’s been told.

He imagines that she’s right – that once, and not that long ago either, it must’ve been something close to otherworldly to sit out here blanketed by nothing but a rolling field of flowers and more sky than he’s ever seen in his life.

 _It’s just earth out here_ , he realizes as he looks up from the ground, and that’s where the beauty stems from. There’s nothing blemishing the horizon in front of him; it’s all just plain earth and plain world. Everything around him for miles is real and untouched, save for the whispering imprints made by a child’s bare feet years ago.

There’s no hint of manufacture or modernity – it’s just soft and quiet out here, ancient even, imbued with only the history of the land.

It’s all real.

He knows a little about freedom. There’s a freedom that comes from living his life the way he wants to, a freedom that comes from having to make peace with answering to no one but himself at the end of the day. There’s a tangible, spiritual freedom that comes every time he feels the wind pushing against his face as he balances himself on his bike; there, he’s the blade slicing through paper. He’s lightning bisecting the sky.

He’d go as far to say that he knows more than just a little about freedom.

But even so, he’s not sure he’s known one quite like this.

This freedom, this unknown, newly-discovered, wonderful thing comes from nothing more than the pure earth around him and the sweet crispness of the air sprayed with the slight perfume of the grass and the flowers hiding somewhere beneath his feet. It’s the complete stillness of this moment, even with her there behind him, her steady breaths floating down to where he stands, paces in front of her.

He knows how to counter claustrophobia now – of his mind, of life itself.

It’s simple really.

It’s right in front of him. It’s being here.

It’s this clean earth and the untouched sky, stretching out beyond a space wider and grander than he’s ever seen before; it’s what the cowboys and pioneers sang and hummed about as they dreamed of freer and better tomorrows, unsullied by the haunts and pains of the past.

It’s this hidden, majestic corner of the world, as real and as pure as he’s ever seen it before.

Jughead steps forward carefully and looks at the flowers tucked away, knitted into the tall grass. There aren’t too many to choose from – a little white bunch that vaguely reminds him of the old lace duster his mother threw out on the trailer’s coffee table when they’d have company, something blue and not at all unlike the soft petals he’d ran his fingertips over outside her house, and a few with small yellow centers, surrounded by long, snowy petals. Leaning down and gently brushing his fingertips over the dirt, he offers up a silent apology for changing what isn’t really his to change before tugging with as much gentleness as he can muster, two flowers out of the ground.

He no expert in the flora and fauna of the world, but even he’s pretty sure that the one he’s bringing back to her now is a daisy.

But more than that, they’re the same ones he’d unwittingly offended her over that first night at Pop’s, and he thinks she just might like these more than the others.

“Here,” Jughead says, holding the flower out to her and extending his arm across the divide as steadily as he can. “You have to look for them, but the flowers are still there. Losing something forever isn’t as easy as you might think it is, Betty.”

She looks at him then, so earnestly and so sincerely that it makes him think he’s handed her much more than a wildflower plucked out of the ground. The corners of her eyes soften as a smile blossoms across her face, slowly but very surely. “Thank you,” Betty says simply, holding her palm open in wait for the flower.

She falls quiet then, lazily twirling the flower’s stem between her fingers in no particular rhythm, her focus fixed on the horizon far in the distance.

He lets her have the silence. He thinks that it must be at least part of what she loves so much about this spot of all places – this feeling, like the world could collapse around them and they’d still be left sitting right here, just like this, unmoved and unbothered.

Untouched.

 

* * *

 

“So, Elizabeth,” Jughead starts eventually, sauntering through the quiet as gently as he can and careful not to tear it wide open. “What’s the story there?”

“What’s the story where?”

“With your name? Earlier at the garage, your dad called you Elizabeth.”

“Oh,” she says, waving the daisy in front of her as she gestures her hand in dismissal. “It’s not much of a story. I’m Betty until my dad wants my attention, then I’m Elizabeth.”

He thinks about writing down that down in his notebook, but he doesn’t want to risk breaking the soft intimacy of this moment out here with her. The lack of eyes following them around, the calm that comes from knowing she’s the only one there beside him is something he doesn’t want to ruin yet.

“There have to be a thousand diminutives of Elizabeth. Why Betty?”

Betty smiles to herself, losing herself to the memory before she lets him in on it, too. “Archie,” she says simply. “He never could say my name when we were little. He used to call me Bet-Bet – I think it was the easiest syllable of my name for him to pronounce. I know Betty’s dated; I know it makes me sound like I’m seventy with nothing but cats and my knitting to keep me company, but it just – stuck, I guess.”

He can’t judge her there – he knows all about nicknames and their sticking power.

“Look, this is in no way meant to be offensive, and I’m sorry if it is. I’m just genuinely curious,” Jughead says, breathing in deeply. It smells good out here, clean and perfectly crisp, completely different from any other air he’s smelled before. “Why is Veronica the one married to Archie and not you?

Betty looks at him then, but with curiosity and what he thinks might be amusement. “I’m not offended,” she tells him. “You don’t think I’ve gotten this question a thousand times before?”

“Oh, I’m one-hundred percent sure that you have.”

She laughs lightly, gently before answering out into the wind. There’s memory in her voice, nostalgia in her reminiscence, but not a hint of regret. “I’m not in love with him. Veronica is. And Archie is in love with her, it’s that simple.”

“And you’ve never been in love with him?” he continues. “Sorry, I just-”

Betty shrugs, gaze still focused out at the field below her feet. “No,” she says. “I’ve never been in love with him. I do love Archie – so, so much. He’s my family, sometimes I think more so than my actual family. But I’ve never been in love with him.” Then quietly, with her voice floating alongside the breeze that brushes past him – “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anyone.”

He takes a beat to consider her words, the ones that he doesn’t quite know how to line up with the rest of her that he knows – a heart as large and wide as the expanse of tallgrass beyond them, and that yet, has never fallen in love with another.

“You haven’t,” Jughead answers eventually. “If you don’t know it, then you haven’t been.”

“Wise words from Cupid himself. So, you’ve been in love?”

“Mmm hmm,” he hums, tossing out a handful of petals and watching them carry on the ribbons of wind. “Once, a long time ago. Is that surprising?”

“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “I think I’d need to know you better to make a judgment call like that.”

He plucks three petals from the daisy he’s been twirling in his hand – _she loves me not, she loves me._

_She loves me not._

“Love gets you in trouble,” he says plainly. “Love makes you do crazy things, it makes you think insane thoughts, it just – it makes you insane, period. And none of it in a good way either.”

“Is this the royal-you, or you-you?”

He pauses, hand hovering over the remaining petals. “I don’t think I can’t speak for the royal-you,” he says slowly. “But I’d imagine a good number would agree with me.”

“That bad, huh?”

He shrugs and tosses another petal out. _She loves me._ “Yes and no. You need to fall in love once,” he tells her. “So you know not to do it again.”

“That might be the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard, Jughead,” she says. “What, so that’s it? You had one bad experience in love and now you’re just writing it off forever?”

“Is that so wrong?”

“Well, yes.”

“We put too much stock in love,” he says, shrugging. “It’s over-commercialized and overemphasized. Its importance is completely oversold. The way the world views love, you’d think it’s this vital thing in life, something that we can’t survive without. And that’s the royal-we here.”

“And you think it’s something we can survive without?” she asks. “Love?”

“Of the romantic variety? Sure – plenty of people do and they’re perfectly happy. They live lives that are no less fulfilled. I mean, look at you. You’re doing just fine without love. You said so yourself – you _have_ done just fine without it for the entirety of your life. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not writing off love in every form,” he clarifies. “Family, friendships – those are important. But everything within that umbrella of romantic love, you can find elsewhere; I don’t need to be Romeo or find a Juliet in my life to be happy. You can love your friends without being in love with them – you’d know all about that, too. You have Archie. You can have sex with someone without being in love with them.”

_She loves me not._

When she swings her eyes down and angles her body away from him, he wonders if he’s overstepped the line with her.

_She loves me._

“So you think love is a choice, then,” Betty continues. “In that, you don’t willingly or unwillingly _fall_ in love so much as you _choose_ to love another person.”

“What do you mean?”

“By saying that you’re never going to fall in love again, you’re actively choosing not to even if you’re experiencing everything under the sun that constitutes love – caring, familiarity, intimacy. For you, loving someone is a decision. It isn’t a moment where you look up and realize you’ve fallen in love with someone, it isn’t a moment where there’s nothing you can do about it anymore but love that someone else. There’s a moment for you where you decide yes or no, to love or not to love.”

Jughead pauses, considering her careful analysis. She’s right – he’s never thought of it in such black and white terms before, but if he’s someone that won’t allow himself to fall in love even if it hits him in the face, then it is a decision for him, plain and simple.

“I guess so,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anyone I’d need badly enough in life that I couldn’t choose not to love and live without if it came to that.”

“That sounds unnecessarily tragic, Jughead,” Betty tells him gently. “Don’t you want love in your life? Someone to love, someone to love you back? It may not always end in doom and gloom, you know.”

He thought he did once – he’s always been the romantic type. Head in the clouds, lost in poetry, lost in a story, his mother would tell him. Once, he’d thought love was a wonderful thing. He’d thought it’d be something that transformed him when the right love came along.

“I don’t need any more trouble in my life,” he tells her eventually.  “I’ve had enough of it.”

And that’s the honest truth.

Jughead watches as she shakes loose her ponytail from her head, marveling at the strands of old gold that carry out behind her in the breeze. She looks different like this, with the sun wrapping around the silhouette of her – so much less severe and so much less reserved. It softens her tremendously and warms the cool impassiveness she so often carries with her.

 _She’s pretty out here like this_ , he finds himself thinking, and he doesn’t need to be someone actively searching for love in his life to admit that. She’s a pretty person.

Beautiful even.

He plucks the final petal from the daisy, feeling the weight of her eyes on him as he tosses the empty stem back out into the field.

_She loves me not._

 

* * *

 

She drives him back to the motel just as maniacally as she’d driven them out to the flower field.

“Trust me,” she tells him when he squawks in protest as she rounds yet another corner far too sharply for his liking. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I drive what more than one person has called a death trap with two wheels, Betty,” he responds. “And I still don’t think I’ll ever get used to the way you drive.”

“Then never get into Archie’s car. He’s worse than I am.”

“Very duly noted.”

He doesn’t say much to her beyond that. There’s more he’d like to ask her, he realizes as he sits through the silence, punctuated only by the wind rushing by his ears. There’s more he’d like to find out about her, but he thinks that watching her right now instead of inundating her with questions might be a better use of his time.

There’s a quiet kind of sadness to her, he’s come to understand, one that he still can’t figure out where it stems from or what in the world it has to do with, but it’s one that rests and wraps gently around her just the same.

He wonders how he could possibly help her get rid of it.

But he wonders that only fleetingly; it’s not his job to fix or become fast friends with her, he reminds himself.

“Is the motel good? Or somewhere else?” Betty asks as she taps hard onto the brake at a red light, sending him lurching forward. He doesn’t know who taught this woman how to drive, but as it stands, he thinks she’s due for some kind of refresher course very soon.

“The motel’s fine,” he says automatically. He’s starving and he seriously reconsiders asking her to drop him off at Pop’s instead, but he doesn’t think that making her circle back to the place she already spends so many of her hours, and on her day off no less, is the kind thing to do after she’s been the very definition of it to him.

“So thanks for today,” Jughead offers when she veers her car into the motel’s parking lot. “You’re good. I mean, you’re a good tour guide.”

_Not the best words, even by his standards._

But as thoroughly embarrassing his inane, mangled thanks is, it still brings forward two circles of pink on the apples of her cheeks. “Just upholding my end of the deal,” Betty says, almost shyly. “Thanks again for the book. I’m excited to read it.”

Jughead pauses, hand hovering over the door handle. There’s no reason for him to stay.

There’s no reason for him to _want_ to stay.

But there’s more than a part of him that does. He likes talking to her, he admits to himself – she’s a good conversationalist with interesting insights and apparently, a verifiable vault of history and trivia stashed up in her head. She questions him instead of simply agreeing, she listens to what he says, and she turns it back on him.

It’s been a while since he’s come across someone like her.

“Well,” Jughead says as he pushes the door open. “I’ll see you around. Thanks again.”

 _You’re here to write,_ he reminds himself as he steps out of her car. _You’re just here to write._

_She has an Archie and a Veronica._

_She has her own very busy life and she doesn’t need you in it._

“Hey, Jughead,” she calls out to him. “Are you free next Saturday?”

He doesn’t know that he’s ever felt a singular heartbeat of his thump quite so erratically against his ribcage as it does at her question.

“Sorry, when?” Jughead asks innocently – he needs more time to figure out what to say, even mere seconds are better than nothing.

“Next Saturday,” Betty repeats, and when he finds himself wondering briefly if she might be asking him out, she forges ahead. “It’s drive-in night. I don’t know what they’re playing yet, but if you want to meet some people other than me and Archie and Veronica, you should come. It’s fun.”

_Oh._

“Want a ride?” she asks, plucking the daisy he’d given her earlier from the dashboard.

He’s distracted by her movements – the way her fingers deftly sweep her hair back up and away from her face, slightly mussed and tangled by the wind, and the quick work she employs in weaving the flower into her ponytail like it was always meant to be there.

“Yeah,” he finds himself saying as he coughs away the catch in his throat. “I do.”

She smiles at him then, widely and honestly, turning the whole of her bright as she does. “I’ll see you later, Jughead.”

As she turns out of the parking lot, the soft petals of the daisy fluttering against her hair, he finds himself smiling, too.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queen Anne’s Lace (also known as the wild carrot) symbolizes amongst others, sanctuary.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> "Avila" - the Wailin' Jennys


	5. Marigold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the truly amazing and kind bugggghead who beta-ed this very long chapter on a Friday night - my most sincere and heartfelt thank you.

  

Betty sits primly on the edge of Veronica and Archie’s bed, legs crossed neatly at the ankles, spine held straight, and hands folded in her laps.

It’s a pose her mother would be proud of.

“What about this one?” Veronica asks, tossing over a top that Betty knows, with just a glance, is far too out of her comfort zone.

“This has sequins everywhere,” Betty says as diplomatically as she can as she holds the top up in front of her in careful study.

“I know it does.”

“We’re just going to the drive-in, V.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know that sequins are really the right move here. The focus should be on the movie, not on you know, how shiny I am,” Betty says, holding back a frown as she notes just how much her chest would really be _out there_ and exposed for the world to see in this top. “Honestly, I have clothes. I really don’t need to borrow anything.”

“Yes, you do,” Veronica says plainly, turning back to her closet with mission in her eyes. “But fine – maybe this is a little out there for the drive-in. Tell me again how this all came about?”

“How what came about?”

“The date,” Veronica says.

Betty doesn’t even think it’s worth it to tell Veronica yet again that it’s not a date.

“I invited him to the drive-in on Saturday,” she says instead.

“Sexy.”

 _“How?_ It’s the drive-in. _”_

“Elbows touching but just barely, two straws in one giant soda, faces lit by the moonlight and starlight _, ‘oh no, Jughead, I only brought one blanket so I guess we’ll have to cuddle and share. I hope you don’t mind_ -”

 _“Okay,”_ Betty interrupts, her wide smile betraying her amusement. “I get it. But trust me, it’s not like that. _He’s_ not like that.”

“Meaning?”

Betty frowns as she gently shakes loose a black silk camisole from the pile. They’re beautiful, the silks and lace blouses Veronica has so graciously offered up to her, and they look beautiful on Veronica, too.

They’re just not her style.

“He said he doesn’t believe in love,” Betty admits. “Or that he doesn’t want to fall in love.”

“What? Why would he say that?”

“Burned badly?” Betty guesses, carefully setting down the blouse in her hands before throwing them up. “Cheated on? I don’t know – all I got was that he’s emotionally unavailable.”

“So why did you invite him to the drive-in, then?”

“The guy’s here all alone,” Betty says, shrugging as she holds the top up against her chest. _Definitely not._ “And leaving him stranded and alone in Ethel’s dad’s motel while the rest of us went to the Twilight just didn’t... feel right.”

“He talks to you a lot for someone who’s all alone,” Veronica points out.

“You think?”

“He’s there at Pop’s every day, without fail, sitting at that counter and making eyes at you. Really, B,” Veronica says, tapping her finger down on the bedspread for emphasis, “what are you both even talking about?”

“Writing,” Betty responds, defensive. Veronica has always pushed her harder than Archie ever has, been blunter, and she’s unsurprised that this is no exception. “Life. Riverdale. Nothing unusual.”

“Since when does chit-chatting about writing have anyone smiling and blushing like that?”

Betty flips through the remaining hangers at her side, deliberately ignoring Veronica’s comment. Veronica is right, she’ll admit that much.

Truthfully, she likes Jughead. She likes talking to him, and she likes that he listens when she responds back. She likes that he does more than nod and grin when she offers her opinion, and there’s a part of her that she can’t quite understand that really and truly likes his hat.

She likes that he doesn’t treat her as though she’ll splinter and break in the very next moments.

She likes him.

But she hadn’t been aware she was being all that obvious about it.

“You know,” Veronica continues, smiling widely and wickedly, “emotionally unavailable doesn’t mean _physically_ unavailable.”

“Veronica.”

“Oh, come _on_ , B. He’s here and so are you. It’s summer and the living is fine – get yours. It’s been a while since you have.”

Betty feels heat set in all over her face like a struck match between her fingertips – suddenly and completely. She isn’t a prude by any means – she enjoys sex as much as the next person, and she doesn’t even mind talking about it on her terms. But, that Veronica is so blithely talking about how long it’s been since she’s had a rough and tumble in the haystack is decidedly _not_ on her terms.

“That’s neither here nor there,” Betty ends up responding, a true cop-out of an answer. “V, he’s a nice guy, but he’s a friend at best. An acquaintance, even. And by the way, none of these are right for me.”

Veronica throws her hands up, but in the teasing, forgiving sort of way. “I figured,” she says dramatically, gathering up the piles of clothes from the bed. “Hand me the one behind you?”

She complies, twisting and reaching for the pooled fabric behind her. “It’s beautiful,” Betty offers as she hands the sequined top back carefully. _It’s just not for me._ “You made this one, right?”

“Mmm,” Veronica hums, flicking through the neat row of hangers on her side of the closet. “A while ago, now. I hand-sewed half of these sequins.”

“Don’t you ever miss it?” Betty asks. “Designing things – making things? You were so good at it, V.”

She watches as Veronica’s hands falter over sequins, briefly and fleetingly, and only with the gentlest of care before slotting the top into the back of her closet. “No,” she responds eventually, and with finality. “I don’t really think about it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I? It’s in my past. It’s not like I’m going back there.”

“Missing something and something being in your past aren’t mutually exclusive. I miss writing for the _Register_ and that was in my past,” Betty counters back, drawing in her breath in a slow, measured inhale. “I miss... I miss a lot of things in my past.”

“Of course you do,” Veronica says, turning to her with all the understanding in the world. “But I’m different. The things you miss meant so much more to you than designing ever did for me, B. They’re so much bigger than just fabric and thread. Making all this was... a hobby at best. And those come and go. I have new ones now. Here,” Veronica says, holding out the hanger with a smile so wide Betty thinks it might be bordering on pained. “Archie always said this one reminded him of you.”

Betty feels the corners of her mouth tug upward as she adjusts the little knot holding together the bottom hem of the simple, sleeveless shirt. “I like it,” she says, holding the top up against herself.

 

* * *

 

Betty taps her fingers rhythmically against the truck’s hood as she waits. She’d texted him a few minutes ago, a simple ‘ _I’m downstairs’_ that she’d tried and failed to not blush at as she’d hit send.

 _It’s just a text,_ she’d told herself.

But she still starts at the sound of his returning message, lighting up her phone’s screen with the two words she’s not quite used to seeing there yet.

_Jughead Jones._

If she’s being honest, it’s been a while since she’s received any kind of message from someone she feels comfortable enough referring to by first name only in her phone – Mom, Dad, Arch, Veronica, Polly – and seeing his name there mixed in with the rest comes alongside a moment of necessary adjustment.

 _Hey,_ she reads when she pulls up his message, _be down in a minute._

Betty releases a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding – half of her had been expecting him to just cancel and send her on her merry way even though she’d checked in with him hours before.

She shakes her head at herself and pockets her phone as she meanders over to the row of flower boxes leaning up against the motel’s wall, in between two empty rooms.

With her palm gently bobbing over the rounded orange bulbs, she pushes down against the pop-poms, smiling as they bend to her command before bouncing back. She leans down and draws her nose up to the tall stems, frilled petals curving and curling into themselves before fanning back out, and breathes in deeply. It’s an earthy, sharp scent she’s greeted with when she does, and it’s one that her mother has never liked, but that she’s never minded herself.

There are better smelling flowers out there in the vast and wide world, but there’s a part of her that likes the reminder that not everything smells as sweet as the proverbial rose.

 

* * *

 

“Hey.” At his voice behind her, Betty jumps, the backs of her bare legs scraping against the flower boxes. “Oh, sorry.”

“No worries,” she says, brushing off a fallen petal she’d unwittingly plucked from her fingers. Aside from the day she’d shown him around town, there’s always been some kind of counter or tabletop between them, and that he’s standing this close to her now has her breath coming out in shallow spurts. “Hey yourself. All set?”

Jughead nods over at her in response, hands still tucked in his pockets. “No Mustang tonight?”

“Nope,” Betty says. She’s wearing shorts, but she still does her best to keep her legs held closely together as she climbs into the truck in what she thinks is a way her mother would approve of. “The truck’s better for drive-in purposes. It’s my dad’s.”

“Ah,” he says. He’s quiet as she goes through the motions of getting them on the road, seemingly waiting for her to finish fiddling with the radio before venturing his next question. “So what time does the movie start?”

“Uh, a half-hour ago?”

 _“What?”_ His dropped seatbelt knocks against the truck loudly as it zips away from his hand.

“What?”

“We just missed a third of the movie!”

“Oh, did you think we were actually going to – no one actually goes to the drive-in to _watch_ the movie, Jughead,” Betty explains, feeling her palms clam up over the worn, leather wrapped wheel as she does.

She probably should’ve explained that to him before.

It takes him a moment for her words to seep in, she thinks; his understanding seems to dawn on him slowly.

“Huh.”

“I’m sorry,” she rambles. “I should’ve mentioned that. I’m just… used to not watching the movie, I guess.”

He shrugs. “No worries. Out of curiosity, what’s playing tonight anyhow?”

“ _North by Northwest_. I think.”

“A classic, too,” he says, almost ruefully. “Okay – so what’s the point of all this if it’s not to see the movie?”

“It’s a social thing more than anything else,” Betty says. “Everyone comes to drive-in night.”

“Everyone being? Besides Archie and Veronica, I mean.”

She smiles at his inference. “Kevin. Moose and Midge, although they missed last month’s – sick baby. My sister and all her very bright redheads.” At the last one, Betty flicks her eyes over in his direction to gauge his reaction.

But if he’s at all worried about meeting her crazy sister, he does a fine job of hiding it. “That’s Polly, right?” he asks, angling his shoulders slightly towards her.

“Yep.”

“And Jensen?”

“Jason,” Betty corrects. “And Dagwood and Juniper.”

“Their… plants?”

“Their kids. You’re thinking of a Dogwood tree.”

“I’m – I’m sorry, what?”

“They’re my niece and nephew,” Betty says, looking over to a particularly uninteresting mailbox on the side of the road to suppress her laughter at the gauntlet of horrified and shocked expressions his face circulates through. _Not that he should be all that surprised,_ she thinks to herself, _given his own name._

“Oh,” Jughead says eventually and measuredly. “Look, I’m not trying to be rude here, I’m genuinely curious – which one is which?”

She smiles then, unable to hold back her amusement. “Juniper’s my niece and Dag’s my nephew. They’re six.”

“Juniper and Dagwood,” Jughead says slowly, voice rounding and stretching uncomfortably over the syllables of the twins’ names. “They’re… interesting nam – what?”

“What?”

“You’re smiling.”

“So? I’m allowed to smile.”

“Tell me something,” he says, stretching out his legs in front of him and propping up one foot against the front interior of the truck. “What do _you_ think of those names?”

“I love them,” Betty says instinctively, voice rising high and bright.

“Sure you do.”

“I do!”

“Mmm hmm.”

“They’re unique, you know – like yours. And unique is good.”

“Betty,” Jughead says, and when she hears her name from his mouth like that – a little sternly and a little teasingly – she can’t help but send a glance his way. “What do you _really_ think of them?”

 _It’s the way he’s looking at her,_ she thinks – like he doesn’t quite believe her, like he can already see her real opinion stamped in red ink across her forehead – that has the words tumbling out of her mouth before she even realizes what she’s saying.

“They’re the most idiotic names I’ve ever heard.”

Jughead laughs then, a big, loud sound that warms up every cold corner of her father’s old truck. “I know,” he says eventually, but still through remnants of laughter. “Don’t take this the wrong way but you have a terrible poker face. You have a tell.”

“No, I don’t,” Betty comes back immediately. Then – “what is it?”

“Your fingers,” he says, gesturing to her hands wrapped around the wheel. “You tap them.”

_“I do not!”_

“I just saw you!”

“Well, you saw wrong.”

“Betty, I’m sitting _right here,_ ” he tells her, and it takes her a moment to catch up with the rest of his sentence when she hears her name in his voice again. It sounds a little different when he says it, and it makes her feel a little different, too. A little more like a woman, and a little less like someone who should be staying at home with a knitted bonnet and several cats instead of going out to drive-in night.

“Fine,” he relents, half-heartedly throwing up his hands. “I must’ve made the whole thing up.”

”I think so,” Betty says primly, but even then, she laughs at her defeat and surrender to him.

She’s never been able to lie. She didn’t know it went so far as such an obvious tell, but dishonesty and deceit have never been her strong suits.

“Juniper and Dagwood,” Jughead muses through the echo of her laughter. “So, technically, not everyone in this town has boring names.”

“Why would you think that they do?”

“You said so.”

“Excuse me, _when?”_

“The night I met you.”

There’s something beautiful in that statement, Betty thinks, and maybe something romantic, too; there’s a hint of intimacy and closeness in those words that have her suddenly and very acutely aware that she’s alone with him in the car right now.

But she doesn’t dwell on it long. Maybe she will later when she’s alone in her bed or counting down the hours at Pop’s and with all the time in the world to, but not now.

 _“Technically,”_ Betty says, emphasizing her way through the syllables, “Polly and co. live in Greendale, so my point still stands.”

As she turns into the drive in’s lot, slowly navigating her way around the parked cars and trucks, Betty allows herself to steal a glance over in his direction.

But he’s looking away from her, out the rolled-down window and at the scene unfolding.

She finds herself looking, too.

In the great hustle and bustle of drive-in night, there’s certainly the pretense of watching the movie – the piles of loved and worn fleece blankets and pillows stacked high in the backs of trucks, the low whirr of old radios in sync, and a faint layer of static folded over a familiar Hollywood drawl, softly singing in time with the whispered breeze.

But at the end of the day, that’s all just optics. Archie and Kevin and Moose huddled together, Riverdale High hoodies on their back and turned towards each other instead of the screen, Fred Andrews and the Sheriff turning a blind eye to the beers their sons couldn’t even be bothered to hide away in paper bags, children drawing smiley faces and hearts in the dirt – _that’s_ the drive-in night she knows.

Betty smiles at the scene she knows so well and finds him doing the same, too.

“Seriously, no one watches the movie here,” Jughead muses quietly to himself, almost in wonderment, leaning forward and closer to the windshield.

“Did you think I was lying before?”

He glances over at her then, amused. “Not at all.” Then, with a smirk that she feels like she shouldn’t like on him, let alone find some kind of attractive– “you didn’t tap your fingers.”

 

* * *

 

Her sister ends up finding them first.

“Betty!” Polly calls, four car-lengths away and while waving at her with a wide-brim fedora in hand that has Betty cringing on sight.

In theory, Betty understands the need to cultivate one’s aesthetic – personal identity and all that.

In reality, she thinks that Polly tries much too hard at it.

She waves back at her sister, barely registering two flying red blurs coming right at her until they’re just about to crash headfirst into her legs. “Hey guys!” Betty greets, kneeling low as she catches a bounding twin with either outstretched arm just in the nick of time. “I’ve missed you!”

“Aunt Betty!”

“Can we sit-“

“-Mom said that-”

“-haven’t seen you in forever and ever-”

“-come to the farm but-”

“-get us snacks-”

“-lost a tooth today and the tooth fairy-”

“-tooth fairy isn’t real, stupid-

“Okay,” Betty cuts off firmly before any more damage is done, both to their young minds and her ringing ears. “One at a time, and Dag, don’t call your sister stupid. That isn’t nice. Jun, let me see your tooth.”

Or lack thereof, but she supposes Juniper gets the message when she grins widely, pink tongue poking out between the gap in her row of baby teeth.

“Well, look at that,” Betty says, raising her voice up high and proud, giving Juniper’s clammy little hand a squeeze for emphasis. “Make sure you put that under your pillow tonight for the tooth fairy, okay?”

“But she’s not _real_ , Aunt Betty.”

“What? Says who?”

“Dag.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Betty counters, holding her expressions carefully steady; her nephew has always been the more realistic and down-to-earth of the two – more like Jason than Polly – but she doesn’t necessarily think that it’s in any way right that Dagwood’s reality become Juniper’s, too.

 _Childhood,_ she thinks, _is far, far too short as it is._

“Dag said that he heard mom telling dad that she’d rather leave a crystal instead of money under my pillow and that-”

“You know what?” Jughead interrupts softly, and when he slowly drops to her side, one arm balanced over his bent knee, Betty double takes at him suddenly there next to her, swaying and nearly tipping over as she turns to look at him. He’s been standing behind her with his hands shoved into his pockets ever since he’d stepped foot on solid ground, but as he comes face-to-face with her niece, there’s nothing but plain ease brushed across his features.

“What?”

“The thing about the tooth fairy is that you have to believe that she’s real for her to actually show up. Do you believe she’s real?”

Betty exhales in relief when Juniper nods slowly. She knows that they’ll have to learn the ugly truth someday, but as it is, she’d rather it not be today.

“Then she’s real,” Jughead says, confident and sure. “And she’ll show up. But it’s all up to you – you have to _believe_ that she will. Think about it this way – if you were the tooth fairy, and you were working very hard all day and night to make everyone happy, wouldn’t your feelings be hurt if everyone thought you weren’t real? I know mine would be.”

“I guess,” her niece says, nodding along slowly. “Who are you, anyway?”

“My name is Jughead,” he says, voice falling onto the world softly. “I’m your Aunt Betty’s... friend.”

Betty’s heart contracts once at the word – _friend_ – the word that she supposes she’d have used herself had Juniper directed her question at her.

And yet, the word that has her running warm at the sound of it in his voice referring to her, regardless.

“Jughead’s new in Riverdale,” Betty adds on, looking from twin to twin as she clears her throat of its high pitch. “So we have to be extra nice to him and show him-”

“I swear to-” Polly says, wheezing slightly as she jogs to catch up, Jason in tow, and free arm dancing at her side as she skids to a stop on the dirt. She always forgets just how red Jason’s hair truly is. “Guys, I told you not to run off like that when there are cars every – oh,” Polly pauses, head jerking back in surprise as Jughead stands from what Betty simply refers to now as the kid-friendly pose - knee-bent, eyes level at three feet, never faltering smile on his face. “Hi. I’m Polly.”

“Pol, Jason, this is Jughead,” Betty says.

Polly’s mouth, Betty thinks, is open far too wide for a woman who named her children Juniper and Dagwood.

“Hey,” Jason says, seamlessly extending a hand, and if nothing else she’ll give him that he’s always polite, even if he is wearing a crystal around his wrist. “Jughead? I heard that correctly?”

“Yeah, you did,” Jughead says, shaking Jason’s hand firmly. “Long story.”

“But an interesting one, I’d bet. Are you in town for long?” she hears Jason ask, but when her sister tilts her head to the side before crouching to adjust Dagwood’s perfectly tied shoelaces, Betty dutifully follows suit.

The lack of a poker face, she supposes, runs in the family.

“What?”

“Just a friend?” Polly asks through her teeth, a winning smile plastered on her face as they protect her words.

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

_“Yes.”_

“He doesn’t look like he’s just a friend.”

 _“Bye_ , Polly.”

“We’re in Greendale,” Betty hears Jason continue to explain as she stands back up. “We have a farm out there.”’

“You should come by sometime, Jughead,” Polly adds in as she stands, too. “We lead meditation seminars out there; aura cleansing, too. It’s very peaceful.”

“Oh,” Jughead begins carefully, eyes flicking to hers in what she thinks might be a hope for guidance as he answers. “Yeah, that would be – thanks. That sounds nice. Relaxing.”

Betty doesn’t know him all that well, but from the little that she does, going to the farm to meditate with her kooky sister would likely be the furthest thing from nice and relaxing to him.

But she appreciates the effort he’s making to be polite to her sister.

“Anyhow,” Polly continues, voice overly bright and affected as she lays flat a hand on the twins’ backs in an effort to usher them away, “we’ll let you both be. Enjoy the movie! Guys, come-”

“No!” both twins scream, tugging onto her either hand with more force she thinks six-year-olds should have. “Aunt Betty said we could get snacks!”

She’s pretty sure she said no such thing.

“And you also said that we could sit-”

“Guys,” Jason interrupts, in what Betty thinks is a completely un-farmlike tone, “what did I say about behavior before we came?”

“But Aunt Betty promised!”

“Jason, it’s fine,” Betty says quickly when the vein in Jason’s forehead starts morphing right into his red hair. “I can bring them back to you after?”

“Betty, you really don’t have to. I’m sure Jughead doesn’t want-”

“It’s no trouble,” Jughead cuts in then, shoulders rising and falling in a quick shrug. “Do they have any allergies?”

Betty doesn’t know that she’s ever seen Polly’s eyes flare so wide before. “Oh!” her sister says, enthusiastic hands digging out a folded bill from her fringe-lined purse. “That’s so thoughtful of you. No, no allergies! They’ll eat anything.”

Betty tries to ignore her sister’s irritatingly beaming face as she takes a twin in either hand, the face that so easily betrays the words Betty’s half-afraid might fall out of Polly’s mouth at any moment.

_This one’s a keeper._

 

* * *

 

“So,” Betty begins, one twin in each hand dragging her towards the concessions stand. “Allergies?”

Even in the darkness, she can see his blush illuminated by the screen’s dim light.

“I don’t know why I asked,” Jughead admits after a beat. “You probably know everything you need to.”

“No, no!” Betty interjects. “I didn’t mean it like that. It was a good question. I just – I didn’t expect that you’d know to ask it, that’s all.”

He looks over to her for a moment, then to her niece kicking at the dirt on the ground as she walks. “I gave my sister a bag of Reese’s Pieces once when she was four,” he says eventually. “I just wanted to keep her quiet. I didn’t know she was allergic to peanuts.”

“Oh. Is she-”

“She’s fine,” Jughead says quickly. “She’s the most wonderfully obnoxious know-it-all of a twenty-one year old the world has ever seen, but JB’s fine. But she just as easily could’ve not been and that would’ve been my fault. I just – wanted to make sure. I think it traumatized me more than it did her. Honestly, I don’t even think she remembers it.”

“That’s usually the way that goes,” Betty muses, crouching briefly to point up at the pictures of popcorn and candy for Juniper and Dagwood to choose from. “You have good instincts.”

Jughead shrugs as he looks to his shoes, dust rising up on the sides. “Anyone would’ve asked.”

She waits until his eyes fall to hers before answering. “No,” she tells him quietly. “I don’t think that’s true.”

_“Aunt Betty!”_

“Huh?” Betty says, starting as Dagwood jerks and tugs down hard on her hand. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s our turn.”

“Oh,” she says quickly, stepping forward and looking up at the menu overhead. _They’ve jacked up the prices; twenty cents, but still – a price hike just the same._ “Guys, what do you want?”

“Popcorn,” the twins tell her, and when their voices join in unison, Betty finds herself marveling once again at the phenomenon she’s now simply dubbed as the twin-thing.

“And M&M’s!”

Betty frowns, looking at the ten her sister had thrown her way crunched into her palm. She loves her sister and she loves the twins, but there’s no one more clueless about the value of a dollar than Polly.

But then again, if she had the Blossom coffers at her disposal, maybe she’d be just as clueless, too.

“A… medium popcorn,” Betty starts, running her eyes over the price tags, rounding, and calculating quickly. “And a box of M&M’s – what?”

“Mom normally lets us get one each,” Dagwood tells her, tugging on her hand.

“Really?” Betty asks, dubious. “Guys, that‘s a lot of salt. And sugar.”

But when she looks down at the twins, their round, bright faces shining up at her with hopeful, toothy smiles, she knows that it doesn’t matter how much they can and cannot eat. They’ll be disappointed if she turns back with anything less than one each for their chubby hands.

And she’s not about to let them down.

“Scratch the medium,” Betty says turning back to the attendant and fishing out an extra ten from her pocket. “Let’s do two smalls instead and the M-”

“Well, hold up,” Jughead says, stepping forward out of the neon shadows to stand next to her, eyes quickly flicking up to the prices as hers had done moments ago. “Why don’t you just get the large and – sir, can you give us two of those?” he asks, pointing to the smaller containers stacked on the back countertop. When the attendant nods, uncaring, he turns back to her with something like careful pride across his face. “Just split it,” he tells her, leaning close as his voice falls quiet, warm and soft in her ear. “Trust me, they can’t eat that much. They just want their own.”

Betty looks at him, blinking through the words she can’t quite seem to find. It’s such an easy and obvious solution, and it’s one that she’s more than a little embarrassed to have glossed over herself.

“Thank you,” she settles on eventually, shaking the mound of popcorn in the smaller container level as he pours. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

Over the edge of the striped cardboard bucket, he glances at her briefly. “You wanted to make them happy,” he says. Then quietly and almost painfully – “my dad used to do this for my sister and me. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up but there’s something about holding your very own popcorn at the movies that’s… I don’t know, magical? My dad didn’t get a lot, but he got that.”

“We always used to get our own,” she explains. “That’s probably why Polly does it with them.”

Jughead nods in understanding. “Here,” he says, setting the larger container in front of her. “Leftovers for the doting aunt.”

She’s about to thank him and at the very least, insist that he take her share of popcorn because he’d just saved her a pretty penny that she hadn’t intended to spend, but he’s down on one knee again, box of candy in his hand, and facing the twins before she gets a chance to.

“Do you want to know a secret?” Jughead asks, rattling the box of M&M’s for emphasis.

Betty almost laughs as the twins nod furiously, arms wrapped tightly around their popcorn containers; rarely, she thinks, if ever has she seen a child react with anything less than unbridled enthusiasm to that question.

As it is, she thinks, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth – she wouldn’t mind knowing herself.

“The _best_ way to eat M&M’s,” he continues, a finger sliding under the end of the box as he pops it open, “is to pour them right into the popcorn and let them melt everywhere. Want to try?”

Betty watches in fascination as he tips half the M&M’s into each little popcorn bucket after the twins’ emphatic bobble-head nods, his hand rattling as he shakes the candy around generously, fingers gently curling around the box.

And for a heartbeat, in between bites of her own popcorn that has her wondering if the salt really does go with the sweet, she wonders what those fingers might feel like holding her.

 _Physically available,_ she finds herself thinking as he rises back up to his full height, sending a trail of summer scented night over in her direction.

 

* * *

 

When it’s just him and her walking back to her father’s truck, the coarse dirt from the drive-in’s lot puffing up before brushing over his shoes, she turns to him with gratitude on her lips.

“Thanks for your help with the twins,” Betty starts, lining up her left foot with his right in an effort to kick up less sand and gravel on him. “I know they can be a handful.”

“Kids usually are,” Jughead says with understanding. “But honestly, those two are fine. I’ve seen worse; my sister was a terror at their age. You’re good with them,” he comments, voice slightly shy and accompanied by a measured smile wavering on his mouth. “Very mom-like.”

She bristles at his casual comment and at the word she hadn’t expected from him. “I feel like I have to be, sometimes,” Betty explains eventually, covering her surprise back up. “I know they’re Polly’s kids, but her way of parenting… I don’t know. I don’t always agree with it. Polly and Jason may be perfectly happy singing kum-ba-yah all day long, but that doesn’t mean their kids should have to. I know it’s not my place,” Betty adds in quickly. “I’m not their mother. I just – want to give them some normalcy when I can, you know? Or my definition of it, anyway.”

“I get it,” he says, voice soft and kind. “I mean, I don’t have kids but I imagine if I did, it’s what I’d want to give them, too. Safety. Normalcy.”

It almost tumbles from her mouth then, the question that she thinks follows naturally from his comment – the one that goes along the lines of whether or not he wants kids in his future.

But she holds back. Given what he thinks about love, Betty figures he doesn’t. Or at least, that he isn’t thinking seriously about the possibility of them at this point in his life.

“You’re good with them, too,” she offers instead. “And not just in the good instincts way.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm hmm. Juniper’s shy – she normally doesn’t do well around strangers, but she seems to like you.”

“I haven’t spent a lot of time around kids,” he tells her, his shoes dragging and scuffing loudly against the dirt. “At least not since my sister was one. I get the feeling that parents don’t usually want me around.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

He appears downcast when he looks to her, regretful, even. “You’d be surprised,” Jughead says simply.

There’s a part of her that wants to ask more and dig deeper, but she knows that expression, and she knows better than to go along with her own temptation at this moment. Instead, she walks alongside him quietly back to where she’d parked earlier, turning her nose up to the half-moon as she does.

It’s getting there, she muses to herself – _summer_. Even in the cover of the night now, it’s a little warmer out, a little heavier with the whispers of warmth arriving and settling themselves in for the season. It’ll be a long one; that’s always the way, or at least it is in Riverdale – the earlier it starts, the longer it stays.

Not that she minds it.

She’s always loved the summer.

There’s a wave of heat that falls over her when the truck comes into view, one that has nothing to do with the season and has everything to do with the person next to her. She knows Veronica’s one-blanket comment had been nothing more than a passing joke, but, she thinks as they inch closer to the truck, maybe she should’ve thought a little more about it.

Because as it is, she does only have the one blanket.

“So, uh, you’re completely welcome to sit with me,” Betty says, waving her hands over the expanse of the truck. “But no pressure, of course. I won’t be offended if you’d rather not.”

He looks after her bumbling ramble, confused and with his head tilted slightly to the right. “Who else would I sit with?”

“I don’t know,” she says, anchoring one foot on the truck before swinging herself up. “I didn’t want to assume.”

He climbs in as she’s draping the blanket around herself, with far less grace than she’d imagine for someone capable of balancing freely on two wheels and a motor in the pouring rain. “This yours?” he asks, moving away a worn, tan-colored cowboy hat from the space next to her.

“Oh,” Betty starts. “No, it’s my dad’s. He likes wearing it when he goes to Centerville; they embrace the whole country thing a bit more over there.” She’s never understood Hal Cooper’s bizarre affinity for this particular hat – it’s not like any of the Coopers hail from Centerville – but her father is what he is. “You can just toss it over there.”

“I’ve never seen one of these before,” Jughead muses, spinning the hat around in his hands.

“Really?”

“I mean, in movies and the like, sure, but not in person,” he tells her. “They aren’t really in vogue right now in Chicago.”

It’s not like she’d know.

“You should wear it,” he encourages, holding it out to her.

She looks at him, surprised at the particular direction he’d gone in. But then again, maybe she shouldn’t have been – this man does seem to have a thing for hats. “Why don’t you?” Betty challenges.

“I asked first,” he says with something she can only characterize as a smirk playing on his lips.

 _It’s a good look on him,_ Betty finds herself thinking. _It makes him look confident._

But she isn’t deterred that easily, confidence on a nice face or not. “I’ll do it if you do.”

“Fine,” he agrees. “But you first.”

She lets him stew for a moment before relenting. “Okay,” she agrees, tugging the tie from her ponytail and giving her hair a cursory fluff before tipping the hat onto her head. It’s always been big on her – Hal Cooper has a head larger than most and in more ways than one. With a flick of her pointer finger, she lifts it from her eyes.

“Well?” she ventures eventually after what feels like far too long without spoken words.

“Cute,” he says simply, clearing his throat as his voice rounds around the word. There’s a part of her that wonders if he might mean more than he’s offering to her now – it’s not the first time she’s heard this particular word from him.

But she’s not sure that she knows how to ask him that, either. “Here,” Betty says instead, hand brushing in front of her face as she pulls the hat off her head. “Your turn.”

He’s apprehensive when he takes it from her, unsteady and slow as he reaches across the divide to pluck it from her hands.

“What’s the story with your hat anyway?” Betty asks, hands busy at gathering her ponytail back up. “I haven’t seen you without it.”

“You have,” he tells her. “I wasn’t wearing it that night at Pop’s.”

She hasn’t forgotten – it’s the only time she hasn’t seen him without it, and by nature, it sticks out as different from the rest.

But she hadn’t known that he’d remembered that.

“Lucky me,” Betty hears herself saying quietly, and in some small way, she thinks she is.

Jughead looks thoughtful and almost lost to time as he answers, and for a moment she thinks he might just brush right past her earlier question. “My mom made it for me when I was a kid,” he starts eventually, voice measured as he plucks each word from his mind with care. “Probably when I was around the twins’ age, actually. I dealt with my fair share of shit back then. Name, family, financial status, and lack thereof – it’s all good playground fodder.”

“Jughead, I’m sorry,” Betty offers quietly. “No child should have to deal with that. Ever.”

He shrugs, looking over to the screen instead of at her. “It was a long time ago,” he brushes off. “I used to read these stories as a kid – do you know any of the Arthurian legends?”

“Of course.”

She can’t place why, but her quick response has an equally quick smile blooming across his face. “I loved them. When I was the twins’ age, I wanted… I wanted to be a king when I grew up,” he admits, and when he does, she thinks that she might like this look on him even better than the confidence he’d been wearing before – this one that falls somewhere between bashfulness and vulnerability. “I thought they were brave. I thought they were noble; so my mom made me this,” Jughead says, gesturing up to his hat. “I think she thought it’d bring out at least some courage in me. I don’t know why I still wear it,” he trails off as he swiftly brushes his hat off his head with one hand and replaces it with the other. “Force of habit, I guess.”

He looks at her then, eyebrows raised under the wide brim in wait for her opinion. It doesn’t look bad on him, she’ll give him that – far from it, even. It’s simply different – a different hat, a different look.

“It’s nice,” Betty concludes eventually, as lightly as possible, nodding down to the knitted beanie in his hand. “But I like yours on you better.”

 

* * *

 

For the first time in recent memory, she’s watching the movie.

He hasn’t said much to her save the odd comment here and there – did she know that Jimmy Stewart had coveted the role originally, did she know that the title came from a line in _Hamlet_ – but she doesn’t mind it.

Sitting next to him here, with the blanket thrown over her legs only when he’d politely declined her offer to share, and the near-empty popcorn wedged between them, is nice. It’s easy. There isn’t any need to put on any pretenses like this – there’s no smile she needs to remember to keep pinned on and there’s no voice for her to raise up, high and bubbly.

There’s comfort in sitting here like this and just being, even in the dim lights of the black-and-white screen.

“Hey!”

At the voice in her ear, Betty jerks and yelps, her knee knocking and rattling the bottom of the popcorn container as she does. _“Why?”_ she fires back accusingly, slapping the back of her hand against Archie’s shoulder as he pops into view. “You know I hate being scared like that.”

“Sorry?” Archie says. “Jughead, want to come meet some of the guys?”

“Really, no one watches the movie here,” he muses, and she’s surprised at just how willingly he gets to his feet at the invitation. “Why not?”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hopes her quietness hasn’t been boring him.

“Betty, you coming?” Archie asks, drumming his fingers loudly against the edge of the truck. “Or are you going to sit here with your fear?”

There are times, Betty thinks, that Archie says things that are far more on the nose than even he likely thinks they are.

“Yeah,” she says, pushing herself to her feet and falling into place at Archie’s left; relegating Jughead to the middle in this moment doesn’t feel right to her. “Who’s here tonight anyhow? And where’s Veronica?”

“Truck,” Archie says simply, flipping the cap off a beer hidden behind his jacket lapel before handing it to Jughead. She thinks about reminding him again that no one ever polices for alcohol on drive-in night, but she knows Archie, and she knows what he’d say.

_It’s the thrill of the rule breaking that’s fun, sometimes, Betty._

_Live a little._

“Veronica’s alone in the truck? Why?”

Archie shrugs, uncapping a second beer for himself. “I don’t know. She said she just wanted to sit for a bit.”

Betty frowns, digging her heels into the ground. Sitting quietly and watching the movie might suit her just fine, but that’s never been Veronica’s style. She likes drive-in nights as much as the next person, but Veronica likes them more. _They’re the place to see,_ she remembers Veronica telling her time and again.

They’re the place to _be_ seen.

And sitting in the back of the truck alone is far from the ideal place to see or be seen.

“You know what?” Betty starts, hanging back from Archie and Jughead for emphasis. “I’ll go get her. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Even from a distance, she can see a faint glint and wink from the back of Archie’s old pickup.

 

* * *

 

 _Sequins_ , Betty realizes as she weaves in and out of the parked Chevys – Veronica’s wearing the sequins she’d politely declined.

“V,” Betty greets, hopping up onto the truck bed and carefully watching her step for the fleece blanket pooled around Veronica’s legs; it’s an expensive one, even if it’s only use is for drive-in and picnic purposes. “You look like a million bucks.”

“Don’t I always?” Veronica responds.

“Always,” Betty agrees, and there’s no need for pretense on her part because Veronica always does.

“You two look like you’re having a nice time,” Veronica quips.

Jughead’s smiling, Betty notes as she follows Veronica’s line of sight over to the group huddled around Moose’s pickup – both Jughead and Archie are. She’s used to Archie’s wide, no-holds-barred smiles, and Jughead’s is different. His smile now is a careful one – most of his are – but there’s a quirk of his mouth upward and a slight twist of his lower lip that for all his carefulness, betrays its naturalness, too.

“He looks like he’s having fun, right?” Betty asks. “Like here tonight in general?”

“You’re not boring him, B, if that’s what you’re getting at.” There are times that she prefers Archie’s gentle, kind words as opposed to Veronica’s bluntly spoken ones, but right now isn’t one of them. “He looks happier. More relaxed; less like a lost puppy dog. This isn’t an easy town to get used to,” Veronica concludes, almost too firmly. “But he’s doing fine.”

“V,” Betty starts, treading slowly. “Are _you_?”

“You mean something by that,” Veronica says plainly.

“Why are you sitting here alone?”

When Veronica shrugs, the rough edges of the sequins brush against Betty’s bare arm.

“Don’t be so dramatic. I just needed a moment to think.”

“About?”

“We got married when we were so young,” Veronica tells her quietly, eyes flicking over to a loudly-laughing Archie. “And sometimes, I forget that there’s a life Archie hasn’t lived by himself because he’s spent it with me. I forget that there’s a life _I_ haven’t lived by myself.” Betty knows that Veronica loves this movie, but even so, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen her stare at it quite so intently before as she’s doing now. “Betty, I never saw myself in a place like this,” Veronica says, voice barely breaking above the crackling radio behind them. “And I’m still getting used to that.”

 _I never did, either,_ Betty thinks about saying. _In my wildest dreams, I never thought that this was what my life would be like._

But this moment isn’t about her right now.

“V,” Betty ventures slowly, “are you... happy?”

“Of course I am,” Veronica says without missing a beat. “Just because I didn’t see this for myself doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy with what I have. I want for nothing – I have Archie and I have you. I have my house. I have Daddy’s money.”

“But what about everything you just said?” Betty argues. “What about the life you haven’t lived by yourself? Don’t you ever think about it?”

“I have this life now. I don’t like looking back and thinking about what could have been. There’s no point in that for me. Archie needs to be here for Fred, and I love him,” she says simply. “This life here is my life now. If I’d lived that other one, I wouldn’t have this. B, I’m happy,” Veronica tells her firmly. “I am.”

 _There’s more to say here,_ Betty thinks. _There’s so much more to say._

But tonight, she has a feeling, isn’t the night to say those things.

“I like the sequins on you,” Betty offers instead, linking her arm through Veronica’s. “You should wear them more often.”

There’s a strong strain of resolve in Veronica’s voice that accompanies her answer.

“I think I will.”

 

* * *

 

She’s back at her father’s truck and scraping up the salt flakes from the bottom of the bucket when he wanders back over.

“So he’s alive,” Betty quips, controlling her smile as she brushes off the remnants of popcorn from her fingertips.

“Very funny,” he says, gesturing to the empty space next to her in the truck’s bed. “May I?”

“Of course.”

“Everything okay with Veronica?” he asks, drawing up one knee and resting his arm over it.

“Oh,” Betty brushes off, waving her hand for emphasis. “She’s fine. I think she just needed a moment.”

“Don’t we all?”

“What did you think of the guys?” Her mouth quirks at the phrase. _The guys._ It’s an accurate enough term, but she’s never been able to say it with a straight face.

When his mouth turns up in a smirk, too, she thinks then that she might not be the only one. “They’re nice,” Jughead responds diplomatically. “Loud, but nice. Jason says thanks again for feeding the twin terrors, by the way.”

She feels her cheeks heat at that last comment. She hadn’t thought it would be, but there’s something decidedly intimate that comes from hearing a message from her brother-in-law relayed through Jughead.

“Archie’s cool,” he continues.

“Yeah?”

Jughead nods, brushing away a wayward lock of hair that falls over his eyes as he does. “I realize I’m not the easiest person in the world to be friends with,” he says, tipping down and shaking his head at himself, almost embarrassed, “but-”

“But Archie is,” she finishes seamlessly.

His eyes snap to her then. “Yeah,” he says, nodding slowly. “Exactly.”

She doesn’t know if she should be sharing this with him, but she feels like he deserves something in return for his honesty. “Can I tell you something?” Betty starts, the build up more so for herself than for him.

“All ears.”

“Do you remember that night we met at Pop’s?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I told you that you could tell a lot about a person based on where they sat in a diner.”

“I remember.” Then a wry, twisting smile before– “I thought it was crap at first.”

“Oh, thanks,” she fires back, throwing in an eye roll for good measure.

“Hey, I said at first.”

_Fair enough._

Betty draws up her knees to her chest, planting the soles of her feet flat on the worn blanket.“I told you that you were looking for conversation,” she says, angling herself towards him.

Jughead nods over at her slowly. “I was. I’d been on the road for twelve hours by myself.”

“That wasn’t what I really wanted to say.”

“What was, then?”

“Lonely people sit at the bar,” she says, moseying with deliberateness through her words. “People without someone to sit with, people who don’t need to save seats for someone else.”

When he doesn’t answer, Betty wonders then if she’s gone too far. She’d chocked him up as the type that appreciates honesty, whoever it comes from, but for a moment, she has the sinking feeling that she might’ve struck a little too close to home.

Wherever that may be for him.

“Why are you telling me this?” Jughead asks eventually.

Betty shrugs, grateful for the night and every wonderful thing it does to mask her bright red face. She tips her head gently over at Moose’s truck in explanation, smiling briefly at Archie laughing loudly as he slaps his hand against his thigh. “You don’t look as alone anymore.”

He looks to her then, so intently, like he can see right into the corners of her mind. She feels completely transparent for a moment; like cellophane, like tracing paper.

Like rain.

“No,” he responds eventually, voice barely audible and eyes holding hers steadily as he answers. “I guess I’m not.”

His arm falls to his side as he stretches out his legs. Against the cold steel of the truck, his pinky finger, warm to the touch, brushes against hers.

 

* * *

 

He’s quiet when she drives him back to the motel after the movie, politely declining her offer to drop him off at Pop’s or anywhere else in town.

She finds that she doesn’t mind it, and that, in and of itself, is slightly strange to her. She’d assumed that she’d want to fill the silence, that it’d be uncomfortable and awkward if she didn’t.

But it isn’t.

Tapping his fingers idly against his knee, his foot gently to the low beat of the radio, he just looks comfortable.

At the motel, she slows and turns into the parking lot, smiling to herself as she pulls into the spot she’d parked in hours earlier.

She’s been taking her turns a little slower than normal these days, but she’s not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that; at least, not yet.

“Sorry you missed most of the movie,” she starts, taking her time to put the truck in park before turning to him. “I probably should’ve mentioned that before.”

In the swooping swing of the motel’s red and yellow neon light drawing shards across his face, she sees him shrug. “I’ve seen it before,” he tells her. “Thanks for the invite, Betty. I had fun.”

It’s there again, that unknowing of how exactly to say goodbye to him and that feeling that she doesn’t completely want to.

That feeling she doesn’t know how to square away within her one way or the other.

“I’m glad,” she says eventually, looking up to the series of plain blue doors on the motel’s upper level. “You know, I’ve lived in Riverdale my entire life and I’ve never seen the inside of one of those rooms before,” she hears herself musing.

“Oh,” he responds slowly. “Did you want to? I don’t mind.”

“No, no!” _She couldn’t have just left everything as is._ “I didn’t mean that – mean it _like_ that. I was just thinking out loud. I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Jughead says, and as he pushes open the car door, she thinks that he just might be challenging her. “Come on – when would you get the chance again?” he asks, one arm resting on the rolled down window as he pokes his head back in. “You’ve wondered your whole life.”

“I could just ask Mr. Muggs,” she tells him, face warmer than she’s ever felt it before, even with factoring in the times she’s stood for hours over a hot griddle at Pop’s. It’s so _personal_ , she thinks – his motel room – where he bathes, where he sleeps, and for her to walk right into it might be assuming too much.

And, it might be sending him entirely the wrong idea, if she follows him up there now.

“You could,” he counters easily, with a quick raise of his eyebrows. “Or you could just see it now. Up to you.”

 

* * *

 

“Fair warning,” he says, key in the door. “It’s messy.”

“I don’t mind,” Betty says quickly. “Really, I can just go if it’s-”

“Betty, seriously,” he cuts in, a low laugh in his voice, “it’s not a big deal.”

She’s surprised by what she finds inside, and what she notes first and foremost is that it isn’t messy.

He doesn’t own enough to _make_ a mess.

There’s the jacket she’d seen on him the night he’d blown into Pop’s on the tailcoats of the storm hanging on one of the chairs around a plain table, a poorly folded stack of clothes sitting on top of the dresser rather than in it, and a stack of books she stops herself from charging across the room to flip through on the desk.

But everything else beyond that is courtesy of the Muggs'. Then again, she supposes that traveling light is a requirement for someone on the road like him.

“So what do you think?”

His voice sounds much louder in the confines of the room. “Of what?”

_Hers does, too._

“The room,” Jughead clarifies. “How closely does it stack up to what you’ve imagined behind these doors?”

“Who’s to say I imagined anything?”

His response is simple – a slight raise of his eyebrows at her. “A lot of salmon; I thought there’d be – I don’t know, more green? It’s not as homey as I thought it’d be,” Betty relents.

Jughead shrugs. “It has everything I need. I’m not complaining. How is it not homey?” he asks, voice catching over the final word.

“I just meant in comparison to the Muggs’ home. Theirs is about as homey as it gets.”

“What does that mean – as homey as it gets? What makes a place feel homey?”

Betty shrugs, running her finger along the edge of the desk, counting the dents and ridges out to herself as she does. “Pictures,” she says. “A child’s drawing hung on the wall, laundry, mismatched silverware. Leftovers. Flowers. The things you put there because you want to, I guess – the important things. The things that make a place feel lived in. The things that feel like yours.”

He’s incalculably still as she answers, and when she falls quiet, his head tilts to the right in what she feels might be a careful study of her. “The things that feel like yours,” Jughead repeats slowly, voice low and almost reverent.

Then, just like that, he masks it back over with impassiveness.

“By the way, do you mind?” he asks, gesturing at a radio she’s sure her grandparents once owned, too. “This thing gets four or five stations, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Please, it’s your room. Better than nothing for what?”

“Insomnia,” he says, fingers deftly spinning at the knobs she’s half-expecting to fall off at any moment. “Sounds help, as counterintuitive as that is. I have no idea why.”

Betty smiles at the song he ends up landing on, a Pop’s jukebox classic. _“Earth Angel,”_ she muses for lack of anything better. “The Pretenders?”

He tuts lightly as he takes the seat across from her. “The Penguins. Close though.”

“Not really.”

“I meant phonetically. Music wise – you’re right, no, not at all,” he agrees with half a laugh.

She watches as he looks around the room, eyes carefully surveying the little space he calls his kingdom and domain, and even then, only temporarily. She wouldn’t recommend that anyone stay in the one tiny town for twenty-seven years, but she wonders why he’s in such a hurry to leave everywhere he goes, too.

And then, there’s a part of her that thinks she might already know.

“So I read your book,” Betty begins.

 _Twice, too,_ but he doesn’t need to know that.

He sits back in his chair, almost as though he’s bracing himself for a hellfire of a review. “Yeah?”

“Mmm hmm,” she hums simply.

“You’re going to make me work for it, aren’t you?” he teases. “Okay – what did you think?”

She smiles over at him, anchoring her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm as she does. “I enjoyed it, Jughead – truly. It was compelling and it was well written. You should be proud of it.”

The smile he returns to her is one of the most genuine she’s seen on him so far. “Well, thanks,” he says, only then allowing himself to lean forward and rest his forearms against the table top. “I was worried – I was contending with a lot there.”

“Like?”

“Christie,” Jughead reminds her. _“Endless Night?”_

“Oh,” Betty repeats, her understanding rushing out with her exhale. “Yours is different, sure, but when has that ever meant inferior? I really did enjoy it. It made me jealous,” she admits, so quietly that she can barely hear her own words.

“Of me?” he asks, gaze jumping to hers. “That’s a new one.”

The most she can manage through the heat growing around her neck and shoulders is something she isn’t even sure resembles a shrug. “Is it?” Betty asks quietly. “You wake up every day and get to write – there aren’t tables for you to bus, there aren’t dishes to wash, there isn’t grease coating your hair no matter how many times you shower – there’s just a blank page. I miss that,” she hears herself telling him, and it’s only when she hears the emphaticness in her voice that she realizes truly how much she does. “All the time.”

When she looks up, drawing her eyes up from her lap to him, what’s waiting there for her is only what she’s come to recognize on him as understanding; kindness. “You don’t have to, you know,” he tells gently. “Betty, if you want to write, you should. Forget the Blossoms and forget what your dad thinks – just write.”

She shakes her head, feeling her ponytail brush against the back of her neck. “I wouldn’t even know what to. It’s not that easy.”

“If you miss it this much, and if it makes you happy, I think it is.”

 _Were it so simple,_ she wishes. She’s defied her parents and rolled her eyes at the Blossoms often enough – if only it were as easy as all that and _just write_ for everything to fall back into place again.

But it isn’t, and she’s accepted a while ago now that this is simply the way things are.

“How old were you when you published it? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Internally, Betty cringes; unwittingly inviting herself up to his motel room only to ask about his age – strikes one and two, according to the rulebook of Alice Cooper.

“A year ago now, so twenty-six,” he tells her, slowly, as if reluctant to move on from the topic of her to him. “Seems like longer than that.”

So he’s exactly her age.

And somehow, that only serves to make her feel worse.

“How long did it take you to write it?”

His eyes flick up to the ceiling in thought. “I’ve been working on it since I was twenty-three, on-and-off; I used to freelance before and I didn’t always have the time to. That, and the book wasn’t always the easiest thing for me to write.”

 _No,_ Betty thinks. She’d meant what she’d said before – she enjoyed the book, but it wasn’t without moments that harrowed her to the bone.

“How did you come up with it? The idea for the book, I mean.”

He guards himself immediately at her question, drawing his shoulders together and shifting back in his seat, just slightly. Against the table, his forearms stiffen and tense. “It was a story I wanted to tell,” Jughead says eventually, measured. “It… came from the heart.”

It’s been nagging at her for days, the question that she hasn’t been able to shove and banish from her mind no matter how hard she’s tried to, that nagging, knowing feeling. As he refuses to meet her eyes with his, the question whose answer she’s now almost certain of.

“You were in prison, weren’t you?” Betty ventures quietly and so carefully.

He doesn’t move, but she can almost see the way his mind does in overtime. “What makes you say that?”

“The way you wrote about it – the monotony of it, how insane it makes you. It was real,” she says. _You were trapped, at least for a time._ “It felt real; I could feel it, the horribleness of it all. The claustrophobia, the hopelessness. You don’t – _can’t_ – write that way; you can’t make someone feel so much unless you’ve actually gone through it yourself.”

“I was in prison,” he admits quietly. “You can ask why, that’s perfectly fair.”

“I don’t need to know.”

“But you want to.”

“I just-” Betty pauses, looking for the words. “You didn’t... kill anyone, did you?”

 _There is no right way to approach that question,_ she concludes after she’s asked it.

But his following silence, the way he stares down hard into the worn carpet, to his worn shoes, the way her heart stops and chills her to her very core makes her think that as uncomfortable as the question had been, it might’ve been a necessary one, too.

 _No, I didn’t,_ shouldn’t be all that difficult to arrive at.

 _Unless_.

“It isn’t what’s officially on my record,” Jughead says eventually, each word punctuated and spoken with deliberateness.

“But?” she whispers.

“But not everyone agrees with that.”

“Like who?”

“My mother,” he says. “My sister, too, a while ago, but she’s come around since then.”

It clicks now – the way he talks about his family, somewhere between embarrassed and full of regret, the reverence with which he remembers his childhood and past, the person he’s never mentioned save once, and only when she’d prompted him.

The way he’d looked at that photo of Pop and his Pop Senior, how he’d bristled at the garage when she’d mentioned it’d been Hal Cooper in all his Saturday morning glory, tinkering away under the truck.

_His name._

“Your father,” Betty guesses.

He simply nods. “You’re still allowed to ask,” he tells her quietly.

So she does. “What – what happened?”

He draws in a great breath, shoulders rising heavily as he does. “I loved someone,” Jughead tells her. “Maybe someone that I shouldn’t have. My dad was part of a gang,” he says, scoffing through his words. “The Southside Serpents. They were his life, but he never wanted them to be mine. Not that it mattered. It should’ve, but it didn’t.”

“Because you loved someone?” Betty says quietly, pulling the pieces together.

He nods again, gaze still fixed on a particularly interesting patch of carpet. “I loved someone in that world, and I thought I had to be a part of it to love her. So I was. My father never wanted me to, but I joined the Serpents. This,” he says, lifting the right sleeve of his t-shirt and revealing a smaller version of the double-headed snake she’d seen on the back of his jacket stamped across his arm. “All of that for this.”

She isn’t sure what _‘all of that’_ exactly pertains to, but she gets his general idea – all that mess, all that tragedy – all of that for nothing.

“I didn’t even know the depth of what the Serpents got themselves involved in. Or maybe I did on some level, and I just chose to ignore it. Love makes you blind.” He runs his hand over his head then, tugging off his hat before tossing it on the table. “No,” he corrects himself harshly. “That isn’t fair. Love made _me_ blind – I didn’t see what I should have. I didn’t act, I didn’t _think_ the way that I should have.”

“Jughead, you don’t need to tell me any more,” she interrupts.

For the first time since she’d ventured her guess, he looks up at her. “There was a raid one night,” he continues after a beat, eyes turning back down. “I didn’t do what I should’ve. I knew what I was supposed to do – I knew, but I didn’t. I should’ve taken care of myself, I should’ve just gotten the hell out of there, but I was in love.”

She doesn’t know that she’s ever heard that word, that pretty, sentimental, sweet word drip with so much disdain before.

“I was so focused on her, on making sure she was safe, on making sure she wasn’t the one caught.”

“That was sweet of you,” she hears herself saying, and in a vacuum, Betty supposes that it is.

“It was stupid of me,” he counters. “My dad came after us – after me.” He sighs then, shoulders rising and falling sharply with his breath. “Here’s the thing about running from the police – it’s far, far easier for one person to escape than three.”

Betty holds her breath and feels her right palm, slick and clammy, slide over the knuckles on her left. She knows what comes next – she’s read the book and she knows enough about him to know how this particular story ends.

But it fills her with anticipation and a dry mouth just the same.

“They shot and killed him.”

“Jughead-”

“I turned back to, you know,” he trails off, but she gets his general idea.

_To help him, to try to save him._

_To do what a son would do for his fallen father._

“I couldn’t just leave him there like that, not when it’d been my fault.”

“Jughead, I’m sorry,” she croaks out, but when his eyes snap to hers, full of fire and full of anger, she thinks it might not have been the right thing to say.

“She’s in Seattle now, the last I heard – Joani,” he continues as if she hadn’t said a thing. “I think she’s married, too. I can’t even blame her – if I were her, I would’ve gotten as far away from me as I could’ve, too. None of it was really her fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Betty repeats again, out of instinct, out of unsureness of what else to say. “I’m just – I’m sorry.”

Jughead shrugs, moving his gaze from the carpet to a visible nick in the table. “It’s not like I’m still in love with her,” he tells her. “She took my bike and moved on with her life, I moved on with mine. The bike I have now is my dad’s, if you’re wondering. _Was_ , I mean. The jacket, too.”

“I think it’s nice that you still have them,” she says. “It’s a nice way to keep him with you.” It doesn’t earn her a glance, but it does earn her a nod. “Can I ask?” Betty starts, picking at a hangnail on her thumb in distraction. “What is officially on your record?”

“Evading law enforcement. I was in jail for a year.”

There’s an extreme sadness that comes to her from that knowledge, then – the dichotomy between what he’d been punished for compared to what she’s sure he’s still punishing himself for now.

“Jughead, I’m sure what happened with your dad wasn’t your fault,” Betty hears herself say as she reaches her arm across the table, fingertips stopping just shy of his loosely fisted hand. “Not completely, anyway.”

“You’re nice, Betty,” he tells her, shaking his head gently. “I think you try to see the good in people, and that’s admirable. But these were my poor choices – my mistakes, my decisions – and I don’t know that there’s a lot of good to be found in any of them.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Betty says quietly. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any good to be found in you.”

He looks up at her then, finally and completely, eyes swinging from the grooves etched on the table over to hers. It’s the first time she’s noticed their color; blue – a light, dusty blue that makes her think of Riverdale’s winter skies, swirled in with a hint of gray. But in that moment, Betty wishes they were any other color. They’re nice, beautiful even, but the blue only serves to heighten the corners and surfaces of his heavy sadness and regret.

She doesn’t like any of that on him, and there’s a part of her that wants to brush her fingertips over his eyes and close them just to escape that look he’s wearing now.

She’s only vaguely aware of how close she is to him when she feels a slight tug at the backs of her calves and lower back, both pulling and straining as she leans forward across the table. Then, there’s the warm exhale of his breath brushing over her in betrayal of his heartbeat; falling quicker than she’d expected it to.

 _He’s moving closer to her, too_ , she notes somewhere in the back of her mind. She can smell him now in a way she hadn’t been able to before.

_The hint of butter from the popcorn pieces he’d dropped on his lap earlier, beer._

_The cocktail of soft breezes and moonlight that make up a summer night now swept over his skin like a spritz of perfume._

But he pauses, face mere inches from her as he hovers in the liminal space between them – the space they’d all but eliminate if he, if _she_ , moved even a heartbeat closer.

 _He’s waiting,_ she realizes – _for her move, for something from her, for an indication that she wants him._

He’s waiting for her permission.

The sound of her own breaths in her ear is thumpingly loud. She wonders if he can hear it too, or if it’s just her.

 _It’s just a kiss_ , she tells herself.

_And those can mean nothing at all._

_It’d just be a kiss._

“I should go,” she decides eventually, feeling her whisper bounce against his lips and back to hers. “I have the early shift tomorrow.”

He holds himself steady at her answer, shoulders unmoving, eyes hooded and unable to meet hers. For a moment, she thinks he might throw all caution to the wind and catch her lips with his anyhow.

But just for a moment.

“Drive safely, Betty,” he says eventually, voice rising to nothing more than a low whisper over the hum of the old radio.

 

* * *

 

Her head feels clouded as she pulls his door shut behind her and as her feet, seemingly of their own volition, take her down the motel’s steps and back across the parking lot.

At the image of her father’s truck and his father’s bike side by side, Betty stops, digging her heels into the hard ground. She remembers that first night – when it’d just been him, her, and the storm at Pop’s – how she’d wanted just a moment more to study the awesomeness of the juxtaposition between her car and his bike. _There’s a lot to study there_ , she’d thought – their preferences, their paths.

Him and her.

She wonders now if they’re all that different. He’d made choices once upon a time that had brought him to Riverdale; she’d made choices that had led her to stay. He has a family, a complicated one, and she does, too.

He has a father who had wanted something different for him – a different life and a different path.

Hers may not be dead and buried, but she knows a little something about that, too – that expectation.

She knows more than a little something if she’s being technical.

As she throws the truck in gear, fleetingly reminding herself to drop it off at her parents’ house, Betty wonders just as briefly if he might’ve kissed her had she stayed a moment more.

She wonders if she might’ve kissed him.

But she knows her answer before she’s even asked herself the question; it lodges right there into her heart despite every thoughtful, logical counterpoint her mind fights her with.

_He’s leaving town. He doesn’t believe in love._

_He doesn’t even want to._

Betty turns the corner out of the motel’s lot, barely remembering to even throw a glance for traffic in the opposite direction before she does.

She’d wanted to kiss him then.

She still wants to kiss him now.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marigold, also known as the “herb of the sun,” is symbolic of creativity and the warmth of the rising sun. However, it also symbolizes pain, despair, and remembrance of the dead.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> “Saturday Night at the Movies” – The Drifters  
> “Earth Angel” – The Penguins


	6. Goldenrod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To bugggghead, who beta’ed all 13k+ words of this chapter - thank you so much.

 

He hasn’t been to Pop’s in a week.

At first, he’d convinced himself that he simply hadn’t wanted to go. He’d told himself that he’s been eating diner food for the better part of two weeks now, and that he’s tired of burgers and fries dancing down to him in an endless parade atop the bar. He’d told himself he needed a change of pace.

Which had come to him in the form of microwavable Hungry-Man dinners and plain tortilla chips from the General Store.

That’d been Wednesday.

By Friday, he’d been bold enough to admit to himself that he’s not tired of Pop’s food, not by a long shot.

He’s been thinking about a burger for days now - dreaming of them, even.

If he’s being honest, what he’s _really_ tired of is fried chicken that’s more soggy than crunchy, and corn kernels that no matter how many wet paper towels he throws over them, still come out tasting and feeling like rocks.

Now, it’s Saturday again, his room is drenched with the smell of melted plastic, and he’s hovering in the strange in-between space of hungry, but not for the food now spinning in his microwave. He’s tired and cranky, and maybe even half-crazed - he feels like might almost have enough pent-up, unused energy in him to walk straight through the motel’s thin, pink floral wallpaper right now.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he plants both feet on the ground and pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes.

It’s not like he has the money to pay for that kind of damage, anyhow.

The silver lining of it all, he supposes, is that he’s actually written something while holed up in the darkness for a week.

Jughead sighs, anchoring his foot against the wall as he tips his chair back.

He’s a liar and he’s the greatest of pretenders. And to himself, no less.

He knows why he’s not at Pop’s right now. He knows why he’d bumbled his way through saying something as simple as _‘no, thank you,’_ when he’d awkwardly and maybe even a little rudely, declined Archie’s invitation to join his Thursday night dinner, a concept he still doesn’t quite understand.

A standing, weekly dinner with the people Archie sees every single day seems a little redundant if he’s being honest.

He knows why he’s in a funk now, too, and why he’s avoided Pop’s the entire week, save Wednesday night when he’d plucked up the courage to venture over, only to turn right around and power-walk back to the confines of his own room when he’d found a blue Mustang parked out front.

He doesn’t like admitting it, but it has a little something to do with her - everything, if he’s being honest.

Jughead isn’t surprised that she’d figured it - _him_ \- all out. She’s observant and smart enough to have put the pieces together all by herself even without the little he’d revealed. He isn’t even surprised by her response - the instinct to run, the mumbled, whispered words, and inability to meet his eye - that’d all been par for the course.

He’s _disappointed_ , but he isn’t surprised.

He wonders now why he didn’t just tell her about it in the first place - it seems like the noble, right thing to do. Timing, Jughead supposes, if he’s trying to make excuses for himself, and the peculiarity and oddness of it all because really, how does one slip that into a sentence?

_Thanks for the burger, Betty, and in case it’s at all relevant, I thought you should know that I’m an ex-con. And an ex-gang member, too._

_Pass the ketchup, please?_

So now she knows all about who and what he is.

What he doesn’t know is why what Betty Cooper thinks of him bothers him as much as it does. He’d known she’d find out eventually - the news that he’d once sung the jailhouse rock, and not that long ago either, never travels that far along behind him. It always catches up, sooner or later.

It always _will_ catch up, no matter how fast he goes and how far he tries to distance himself from it.

And he’s made his peace with that. This is his cross to bear - these are the consequences of his horrible actions and stupid decisions, and the leers and looks, the whispers and upturned noses are all just part and parcel of that.

The ugly, misshapen snake on his right arm demands it as such, hissing its reminder daily.

He’s known all this for years. He knew that once she found out, she’d look at him a little differently, because people always have. She’d draw back into herself, widen her eyes, and maybe even mull over how she’d been so off base about the man in the funny hat, that is, if she hadn’t had her suspicions already.

And still through all that great rhyme and reason, her bolting from his motel room like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough, hand fumbling on the doorknob and twisting the wrong way twice in her great flurry to leave had just plain hurt. _Maybe it’s her niceness,_ he thinks, _her goodness_ ; for someone like her to look at him differently stings more than the rest because even in her kind, overly understanding eyes, he’d done something wrong enough to deserve it.

Jughead thinks back to the exact way she’d looked at him - the way she’d held her eyes and tipped her head, the way she’d slid her elbow forward on the table, followed by the whole of her leaning towards him. She’d been kind to him - maybe out of the goodness of her heart, maybe because she’d wanted to find some kind of explanation to wipe away his past and make it prettier than it actually is.

Maybe because she’d really believed the things she’d said - that she’s sorry, that she doesn’t think it’s his fault. That there’s some good buried in him even after all the wrong he’s done in his life.

Then, he starts thinking about the one thing that he’s done his utmost to not think about, and that he’s completely and utterly failed at this past week - that when she’d leaned closer to him, lips slightly parted, eyes halfway hooded - she’d looked like she might’ve just wanted to kiss him.

And he’d almost done it, too.

He’d wanted to. Despite everything he knows of himself and everything he’s cautioned himself against, he’d still wanted to.

To his right, the microwave beeps three times, but he doesn’t answer its call.

Instead, he digs for the duffel he’d thrown inside the closet, on top of the safe he’d thrown his socks and a few books into, and begins to pack.

 

* * *

 

 _It doesn’t matter that he likes it here,_ he tells himself.

He’ll find another place with good burgers - they won’t be as good as Pop’s, but they’ll be just fine, and they’ll be better than the mush he’s been eating for the past week. Chicago is a big city and he’s sure that he can find it all there.

Never mind that he hadn’t found anything worth sticking around for, save his sister in the past few months.

He pauses briefly when he thinks about the money he’ll be leaving behind in the form of his incredibly stupid impulse purchase, also known as the suite he’s tearing through right now as he gathers up his things, but it is what it is.

 _It’s a good lesson_ , he thinks as he throws his poorly folded t-shirts into his bag - _to never make a commitment that he’ll stay in one place for this long again_. He knows himself better than that by now.

It’s a little pathetic, he’ll admit - quitting town like this. But at the end of the day, he’s not tied down to anyone here, and he doesn’t owe this place any explanation about who he is. They can judge him if they want to, but he isn’t obligated to stay and look at their faces while they do.

Moreover, he doesn’t want to.

And he especially doesn’t want to see Betty’s face looking at him with that odd mix of sadness and pity and fear that he’s seen on so many faces before hers.

He’s just about done shoving his few handfuls of clothes into his bag when there’s a knock on his door.

“Uh, I’m good, thanks,” Jughead calls out, doing his best to keep his voice level; it’s not like he’s committing a crime by leaving. He’d really just rather avoid the questions. “I’m good,” Jughead repeats, voice louder when the knock comes again. “I’m all set for towels.”

“Dude, it’s me.”

He knows that voice - it’s the only one that’s dared to call him _dude_ in recent memory.

Jughead lets out an audible sigh as he pushes his duffel off the bed and to the side. It’s hard to be rude to a guy as earnest as Archie, who even without Betty’s hinting around it, is so obviously and overtly trying to be nice and include him in the goings-on of the town.

“It’s Archie,” the voice continues. “Open up.”

 _Oxymoron_ , Jughead thinks as he pushes his duffel off the bed and to the side, out of view. An opening of _‘dude, it’s me’_ shouldn’t need to be followed up with _‘it’s so-and-so’._

“Hey,” Jughead says through the sliver of door he opens. “So listen, now’s not really a good time. I’m actually in the middle of something.”

As good as he thinks Archie is at throwing on a vacant expression from time to time, he’s annoyingly astute now as he easily peeks around the door frame into the paltry remains of a lived-in room. “In the middle of going somewhere?”

“No.” It’s both an unsteady and uneasy lie. “Just… you know - reorganizing.”

“By putting all your stuff back in your bag?” Archie asks, the slowness in the way he speaks betraying his disbelief.

Jughead shrugs. “Sure.”

“Weird, but whatever,” Archie brushes off. “Anyhow, you’re coming to the site with me today. We need another person - Moose’s kid is sick so he’s out.”

“Look, Archie, I appreciate the offer, or whatever this… bonding experience is. But I-”

“It’s not a _bonding experience,_ ” Archie comes back with quickly, affront written all over his face. “It’s me asking for your help today.”

“You know, I’m really not the physical type. I can barely lift my bag as it is, so you’d really be better off finding-”

“-and Betty’s bringing lunch with Ronnie if that sways you at all. Oh, and I’ll pay you for your time, too. I probably should’ve led with that.”

Jughead pauses, stilled by her name and what he thinks Archie might be implying. That she expects him to be there with ‘the guys’ and not halfway on the road to Greendale when she shows up with a tray of Pop’s in her front seat.

That he likes her. That she might mean something to him.

“Man, come on,” Archie says, slapping an arm down on his shoulder. “Take a break from packing-”

“-reorganizing-”

“-just come on down. Breathe fresh air and get out of this freakishly pink room. Help out for a bit,” Archie says, dropping his voice down low for what comes next. “If you still want to _reorganize_ after, then fine. I won’t stop you. But seriously, I could use the help today. We’re really behind schedule.”

Jughead holds back a sigh, fighting the idea that comes to him briefly, and so childishly, too - the one that has him thinking of telling Archie there’s some bird or unicorn in the tree across the way, only to slam the door in his face when he’s not looking and hide out until the redhead leaves.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to help, or that he doesn’t have the time to because he does on both fronts. He has nothing much on his agenda today other than to hightail right on out of this place, and Archie’s been nice enough to him while he’s been here; a plain and simple fact that still throws him for a loop every time he comes face-to-face with it.

It’s the least he can do, Jughead thinks - give Archie a hand after the one Archie’s extended to him more than once now.

And, he’s hungry, too - he’s so hungry.

The road back to Chicago will still be there after a day of manual labor and a meal that doesn’t come from a frozen box. And it’ll probably be a much more pleasant trip with a few extra bucks in his back pocket.

“Doing this for the burger,” Jughead says eventually, pulling the door shut behind him.

 

* * *

 

All he can think while Archie drives, one hand slung over the wheel and the back of his wrist lazily directing him through the handful of wide turns, is that Betty had been wrong.

Archie’s the better driver, and by miles, too.

There’s still an air of recklessness to the way Archie drives - a little too fast and with more focus on finding the right radio station than the road - but it doesn’t make him uncomfortable. He thinks that it should, by all means - he doesn’t enjoy the feeling of anyone behind the wheel or handlebars but himself - and much less so when there’s even a hint carelessness or nonchalance involved.

But for whatever reason, maybe the unending stretch of empty dirt road in front of them, or maybe the fact that he hasn’t seen another car in miles, he’s feeling just fine.

Jughead thinks about making conversation, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t feel the need to. Next to him, Archie is tapping his fingers against the wheel, flexing and curling them to the slow, swinging beat of the song playing lowly on the radio. It reminds him of the old electric Gibson he’d never been allowed to touch, only look at as his father’s red fingers moved over the fretboard.

Archie’s singing, too. Not much - only when the cap of the chorus pops up - but theoretically, it all should be enough to make him want to stop, drop, and roll right on out of the moving truck.

And yet, it doesn’t.

 _“King of the road,”_ he hears Archie sing softly, the four words that Jughead now thinks are the only ones that Archie knows of the song; he hasn’t sung anything else but those.

The guy has a nice voice, he’ll give him that; slightly boyish and a little raspy, but sharp, too, and steady as it holds and grips around the same four words.

Jughead watches as Archie smiles to himself. “I love that song,” Archie says as the melody fades, and Jughead thinks then that maybe Archie had just been holding back from belting out the entire thing for his sake.“It’s my dad’s favorite.”

His father’s, too, back in the day, but he doesn’t tell Archie that.

“So what’s the thing?” Archie asks as he turns onto another dirt road that looks uncannily like the one they’d just been driving down.

“What thing?”

“The thing that’s been keeping you away from Pop’s.”

“Nothing. I just - needed a change of pace. And work,” Jughead adds, thinking he really should’ve led with that. “You know, when inspiration calls.”

“So all that reorganizing has nothing to do with Betty?”

_Yes._

“No,” he says. “Why, did she say something?”

He wishes there were a way for that sentence to sound less twee and childish, but he doesn’t think that there is.

Archie shrugs. “Just that she hasn’t seen you all week. She thought you might’ve left.” Then, tentatively and almost nervously - “I think she thinks she pissed you off. She’s had her sad chipmunk look since Wednesday.”

“Excuse me?”

Archie smiles then. “Betty’s always been intuitive. And she’s always stuck her nose in my business, which I really don’t mind for the most part. Anymore. But it used to piss me off when we were younger.”

 _How could it not_ , he thinks. He’s always been one for privacy.

“It’s hard to be mad at Betty,” Archie continues. “She always has like, the best of the best intentions, even if it is annoying sometimes. When we were little, I never wanted to yell at her or anything, so I sulked instead. And then she’d sulk. She’d do this thing where she’d puff up her cheeks, hold her eyes really wide, and frown the biggest, most obvious frown every time I looked at her - like she knew that I was pissed and at her, but she couldn’t figure out why. It’s her sad chipmunk look. Anyhow, she’s been doing it again. I figured it was about you.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s not about me.”

Jughead looks at the arm he has balancing on the rolled-down frame, unbuttoned sleeve fluttering in the push back of the wind. He’s embarrassed - that much he can admit to himself; that his story is the one he has to tell and share with the world, that it’s his instinct to leave it behind even though it’s on him to shoulder the burden of it.

That he’d made her feel like she’d done something wrong, because no one is responsible for feeling terrible about his past but him and him alone.

“I was in jail,” Jughead hears himself admitting quietly.

_“This week?”_

“No,” he corrects quickly. “Before. Before Riverdale - a while ago now. I was twenty-two.”

“So that’s the big secret? That you were in jail?”

He holds up his hands in surrender for lack of anything better to do.

“I was in jail once.”

“What? _You?”_

“Yep - spent a night in holding.”

He releases the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. _Not the same thing_ , Jughead thinks, surprised by the twinge of disappointment that comes along with the realization. He doesn’t wish the reality he’d endured that year on Archie, or anyone, really, except those like him that deserve that fate. But in that moment, there’d been an sigh of relief and an inhale of camaraderie because if Riverdale’s golden son had gone through what he had and still been welcomed back home with good graces and open arms, then just maybe, he can be, too.

And maybe not here, but someday and somewhere.

But as it is, he and Archie aren’t the same.

“Underage drinking?” Jughead guesses, half for the hell of it, half to satisfy his curiosity. “Frat party gone wrong?”

“I mean, that was a part of it, but no,” Archie admits. “Public indecency. With a side of disturbing the peace.”

“So that’s what - streaking?”

And when Archie’s face turns a dead match for the mop of pointed, unruly mess on his head, Jughead laughs, the sound of his laughter clashing against the rumble of the rushing wind.

“Was it worth it?” Jughead asks when he catches his breath, remnants of laughter still punctuating his question.

Archie shrugs, unbothered. “I like the memory. Ronnie doesn’t, though.”

That surprises him - Veronica seems like a woman who wouldn’t mind a little chaos every now and then because of the little he’s seen and knows of her, she’s the very definition of the word.

Then, there’s Betty, who he can almost see at the end of the finish line, or whatever marks the end of one’s naked run through the quads, with an armful of clothes and the sternest of looks stamped on her face.

“Look, Archie,” Jughead starts, lifting slightly and letting his hand fall on the truck’s open window. “As nice and as… _Animal House_ as that all is, I was in jail-jail - _prison_ jail.”

“Oh,” Archie says slowly, corners of his mouth pulling down in understanding. “Shit. What did you do?”

Jughead feels his shoulders tense and hunch forward. “I ran from the cops. Then I got caught by the cops.” And, because for reasons unknown to him, he’s suddenly being so forthright - “I was in a gang that ran drugs.”

There’s nothing but silence that follows, one that’s so heavy with the weight of Archie’s thinking that Jughead feels like it just might end up crushing him. Half of him thinks that he wouldn’t at all be surprised if the All-American Archie Andrews pulled over on the side of the dirt road and ordered him out of the truck right then and there.

The other half of him isn’t at all surprised that Archie doesn’t.

“Do you still do that stuff?” Archie ventures after a beat.

“Does it look like I do?”

“Nah,” Archie says easily. “The bike’s not really you. Do you _want_ to do that stuff?”

Jughead so desperately wants to take a minute to mull over that observation that he thinks Archie might not even have realized he’d said - _the bike’s not really you_ \- but there’s a bigger, more important question to answer before anything else.

“I’ve never wanted to,” he says, wondering if he’s ever meant anything more. “I was just... young and dumb.”

It’s no excuse and it never will be, but it’s the best explanation he has.

“So what’s the problem then? I don’t get it.”

“I was a criminal, Archie,” Jughead spells out slowly.

“And?”

“It’s not as simple as just _‘and’_.”

“Why not? It’s not like you still _are_ a criminal. I’m not saying that the stuff you did wasn’t wrong, because it is. Like, holy crap, man - I’m surprised you had that in you. But you made mistakes when you were young - so did I. So did Betty. So did the rest of the world.”

He finds that hard to believe of Betty, but he tries not to dwell on it.

“Look, Jug,” Archie says. “Can I call you Jug? Jughead is such a mouthful.”

“Go nuts,” he concedes, surprised that he truly means it.

There’s a handful of people he doesn’t mind calling him Jug, and he supposes that Archie Andrews is one of them.

“I know this town. No one’s going to care about all that stuff, if that’s what you’re worried about. They’ll be curious because they always are, but they won’t care. So if you’re… _reorganizing_ because of that, don’t. There’s no need to.”

Jughead looks out his window, the gaze he’d kept fixed on the dirt road ahead now swinging to the fields of yellow on either side of the car. _It’s not wheat_ , he realizes as he leans his head out slightly, the undercurrents of wind beating back against his face as he does.

 _They’re flowers_ \- rolling fields of yellow stems shooting up straight and tall towards the sky; a handful of clouds today, but otherwise, clear and sublimely blue. He’s never seen wheat fields before, but even so, he wonders now how he could’ve mistaken these flowers for them. _They’re far too vibrant,_ he thinks, _and much too full of vitality and life and color to be just plain old wheat._

He wonders if Archie is right and if leaving town now when he still has a month left on his impulse purchase of a motel room might be also little impulsive, too.

He wonders what Betty thinks of these flowers they’re driving by now - he’s noticed that she seems to have some kind of affinity for them in general, and he wonders if she might like these particular golden ones.

As the flowers roll past, he thinks that they remind him a little of her hair.

 

* * *

  

The site is thoroughly unimpressive.

He’d expected a little more than just machinery and a by-and-large empty lot at the mysterious place known as _‘the site’_ , or at the very least, some kind of frame or structure or hint of a building in place, but he doesn’t tell Archie any of that.

As it is, Archie looks a little too proud of all the flat earth around them for Jughead to bring him down right now.

Instead, he follows Archie lead by swinging up the second toolbox and hard hat from the back of the truck, doing his best to not overtly huff and puff as he carries it over to the edge of the lot, lining up his footfalls with the red lines drawn in the dirt.

“Jughead!”

He turns at his name, finding the man he’d thought was Moose, but that he’s figures now must be Kevin, waving to him widely from his perch in the driver’s seat of the backhoe. “Thanks for coming.”

“Hey,” he greets back, raising his free hand. It’s awkward, even by his standards.

“Kevin’s pinch hitting, too,” Archie explains. “He works at the sheriff’s station over in Centerville.”

“Morning off,” Kevin adds in.

“Where is everyone, out of curiosity?” Jughead asks. It’s a question he doesn’t necessarily want or need to know the answer to, but it’s also one that he thinks might work well as a distraction as he shucks off his flannel.

But if Archie is at all put off by the tattoo curving along his arm, Jughead can’t find the judgment. “Flu season,” he says shrugging.

“Still?” Jughead remembers Betty mentioning something about it in passing weeks ago - an excuse for the busy she liked to stay - but he’d figured that whatever had been going around would’ve left long ago by now.

“It tends to stick around when the weather changes,” Archie says, nodding over to a row of wheelbarrows stacked to the side. “Grab one, would you?”

 

* * *

 

He follows Archie’s minimal instructions - wheel the dirt that Kevin trenches out from in between the red lines and pile it off to the side.

Admittedly, he doesn’t need much more instruction than that. He’s sure that he doesn’t make it look as seamless as Archie does, but it’s all pretty straightforward.

And that’s nice, too, in a way. Jughead doesn’t know that he’d find satisfaction in walking piles of dirt back and forth indefinitely, but he doesn’t mind it today - this repetition that doesn’t yet earn the definition of monotonous in his book. It’s a nice reprieve from sitting unmoving in the motel’s uncomfortable standard-issue desk chair and staring daggers at his computer screen.

And the air out here is nice, too; it’s refreshing. It’s slightly misted over with the earthy tang of overturned dirt and the slow heat of the season, but it’s worlds better than the stomach-turning combination of melted TV-tray plastic and microwave meals he’s been inhaling.

He feels his lungs and mind begin to clear as he continues to breathe in deeply, and the heavy hand that’s been holding his head and his heart the entire week, all the while threatening to crack down and pop them both, slowly begins to slacken.

_Finally._

“So what exactly are you building here?” Jughead asks, wincing as his shin hits the back of the wheelbarrow.

“It’s a house,” Archie explains, and at that moment, Jughead is at least a little jealous that Archie seems to be walking back and forth with these full piles of dirt without even breaking a sweat. “Or it’s going to be at some point; still a long way to go.”

“Do you guys do a lot of houses?”

Archie shakes his head, hard hat tilting slightly as he does.“Not anymore. We used to, though. We’ve gotten a ton of work out in Centerville this year, mostly commercial stuff. It’s nice to get back to this.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Archie shrugs. “The commercial stuff? I’m glad it’s not in Riverdale. I kind of like Riverdale the way it is.”

“Did you always want to do this kind of work?”

“Not really,” Archie says, shrugging. “I studied music in college. Honestly, I thought I’d do something with that.”

“Guitar, right?”

“Yep. My dad started this business with his dad. It’s his entire life; I never saw it being mine, but I don’t mind this. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d come back to Riverdale after I left, but he was hurt on the job a while ago when I was in college. Back injury.”

“I’m sorry,” Jughead says, words rolling out of his mouth instinctively. He remembers what Betty had told him that day he’d unwittingly walked her back to her little house - that Archie’s dad had needed him back in Riverdale, and he knows how the story ends now.

With Archie wheeling dirt and laying bricks instead of out on the road with a guitar slung across his shoulders.

“My dad thought he’d have to sell the business for a while,” Archie admits. “But I couldn’t let him. He gave his entire life to two things - this business and me. This was the least I could do for him. So now we’re Andrews and Son Construction,” Archie tells him. “But honestly, I like it out here. It’s not a bad living.”

At least there’s a silver lining to it all, Jughead thinks - that Archie doesn’t seem particularly unhappy with his lot in life.

Jughead holds back a grunt as he shoves his wheelbarrow alongside Archie’s. “It’s better than standing over a hot stove at Pop’s everyday,” he says, not entirely sure of where the comment had even come from.

And when Archie looks over at him, with such a knowing, smug look so plainly written across his face, Jughead wishes that he hadn’t said anything at all.

“So what’s going on with you and Betty, anyhow?” Archie asks, foot anchored against the bottom of the wheelbarrow as he dumps out the dirt.

“Nothing,” he says, shrugging. He’s stalling, and he’s pretty sure that even Archie knows it. “We’re… friends.”

“Just friends?”

“As opposed to?”

“I don’t know,” Archie says, shrugging. “You guys seem close.”

It’s that last word - _close_ \- that has yet another wave of sweat forming and dotting his forehead.

“I mean, I like her. I think she’s a nice person,” he hears himself saying, quickly covering up the beginning of his sentence with the latter in an effort to do away with Archie’s wide, telling grin. “But nothing more than that if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not,” Archie says firmly. “Look, Betty’s my best friend. I’ve known her my whole life. I’m a month older than her so she can’t say the same, but I’ve been in her life since day one - literally. She’s like a sister to me. She was the best man at my wedding. I’ve always watched out for her, and she’s always watched out for me.”

“What’s your point?”

“That she’s always done the right thing by me. She was the one who called me when my dad got hurt. She was the one that told me that he was thinking about selling the business. Betty’s been through a lot - more than anyone should have to deal with in a lifetime, ever.” Archie sighs then, thick brows furrowing as if he’d unwittingly revealed too much. “I want her to be happy. I just… I want what’s best for her,” he says eventually. “I always will.”

He wonders then what exactly Archie means - whether what’s best for Betty is him in her life, or if it’s him staying far away from it.

Or somewhere in the in between he doesn’t even know how to define.

“Archie, I… appreciate all of that,” Jughead says carefully. “Betty’s great. Really, she is. And one day, I’m sure she’ll find a great person who’ll be great for her. I  just know that’s not me,” Jughead says. “And, I’m reorganizing, remember?”

When Archie’s voice starts again, far enough away from Kevin tipping his ear in their direction from the backhoe, it’s more measured and thoughtful than he’s ever heard it before. “You know how we’re digging out the foundation right now?”

“Yeah. Most important part of the house, right?” Jughead finishes, because contractor or not, that he knows just as well as anyone else.

“Exactly - screw up the foundation, screw up the home. You need to do everything carefully at this part - measure carefully, dig carefully, pour the concrete carefully - all of it. Otherwise you’ll just be left with rubble and a lawsuit. Which is why you take your time,” Archie says, foot at the base of the wheelbarrow as he tips it over.

“But,” Archie continues, “going slow here is worth it. You know, when you do this kind of work, it’s never for you - it’s always for the person you’re building for. And that person will almost always find a way to be pissed off about something - they don’t like this, or they want that instead. And most of the time, we’ll try to work with them - it’s their home, you know? Or their office - their whatever. But honestly, I don’t give a crap when people complain about this part taking too long,” Archie tells him, tipping his head back towards the outline of a house that he’s finally starting to see.

“So what do you tell them when they do?”

Archie pauses then, one foot rhythmically swinging from left to right as he carves out a shallow valley in the dirt. “That when you go want to get something right, you have to go slowly,” Archie says, voice thoughtful but steadily sure. “Beautiful things take time.”

 

* * *

 

He’s sitting in the dirt with his hard hat perched on top of his right knee as he digs his heel into the dirt, lazily and half-heartedly drawing out his initials. There’s strain and soreness building in his arms already, and he doesn’t even want to know what that’s going to feel like tomorrow.

 _Like shit, probably,_ he thinks.

Jughead scrubs a hand over his face, remembering only halfway down that it’s covered in grime. He can make out halves of sentences and broken words as Archie shuffles around the dirt a handful of paces from him, but he’s glommed on to the sad, miserable gist of it.

Betty’s not coming - she’s not free right now.

And the promised burgers aren’t coming either.

“It’s fine, Betty,” he hears Archie assure her repeatedly. “No, don’t come out here, it’s not your… no, it’s not a big deal. Just tell Ronnie to... Ronnie’s _where?_ Why?”

Jughead stands and traces the lines demarcating the perimeters of the house with his footsteps, feeling more than a little nosey at hearing what he thinks might be private details about Archie and Veronica’s personal lives. Picking up bits and pieces of Archie’s conversation with Betty is one thing - he’s shared popcorn and her father’s cowboy hat with her and he knows her favorite place in Riverdale; for whatever reason he doesn’t think she’d mind all that much.

Veronica though - he wouldn’t put it past someone like her to drive back from whatever shocking place she seems to be today just to scrub out his ears with soap.

“So,” Kevin starts, hopping down from the backhoe as Jughead paces near it. “Riverdale treating you well this week?”

Jughead shrugs. “As well as it can.”

“Good,” Kevin says, and from his voice alone, Jughead can tell that Kevin sincerely means that. “I thought we’d scared you off after drive-in night. Glad we didn’t.”

“Why, was that the intent?”

“Jughead, the less you start looking for a reason to leave, the more you’ll find a reason to stay,” Kevin tells him plainly, words that nearly stop him dead center in the perimeter of the house. “I just meant that it doesn’t get more peak Riverdale than drive-in night.”

“What, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll?” Jughead jokes, mostly to himself.

But Kevin laughs at the reference he hadn’t expected him to pick up and run with, flashing teeth and an upturned nose as the noise travels through the air. “You laugh, but Archie and Betty used to sing that on the playground,” Kevin says. “They’d perform for us. All the time.”

It’s his turn to laugh then, and he does, even louder than Kevin had. It’s an endearing, sentimental image and memory of her, one that he doesn’t think she’d bring up and share with him herself. But he likes that he has this little piece of her past to round her out now. Everyone else in Riverdale might know what Betty Cooper was like at age six, but he doesn’t.

“Honestly, I’m not surprised,” he says when he’s able to wrangle control of his laughter.

“You’re doing a good thing by helping Archie,” Kevin says. “He’s so in over his head right now.”

“Why?”

Kevin shrugs. “Summer. Everyone has a million things to do and way too many kids out from school to take care of. And Archie’s too nice to lay down the law when it comes to that.”

He hadn’t even thought of that - summer vacation, kids to entertain or at the very least, send off to camp somewhere; he’s been removed from the concept for so long now. “I’m glad I can help, then,” Jughead says, wondering how much the little pile of dirt he’d carted off to the side actually does help.

“Listen, Jughead,” Kevin says slowly. “Or should I say - Forsythe?”

He wishes he’d respond less dramatically, but he doesn’t - at the name that has always felt more like his father’s than his own, he stops with one foot mid-step as his blood chills and pumps cold.

“How did you-”

“It wasn’t Betty, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It hadn’t been at all what he’d been thinking. Even stuck in the vast in between of utter confusion and dumbfoundedness, he knows without a shadow of a doubt that however Kevin knows his real name and very likely, all about his sordid past, has absolutely nothing to do with Betty.

“Her mother wanted me to look into you,” Kevin admits. “Your gang - that’s the tattoo, right?”

It’s an easy answer - _yes, that’s what his stupid, poorly inked tattoo is all about_ \- but the words fail to materialize. “I didn’t look you up in the system,” Kevin says quickly. “I’ll get fired for that, although I don’t think Betty’s mom cares. Or understands that. But I did find the article.”

And he knows, just like that, exactly which article Kevin’s talking about - the succinct, three-paragraph blurb in one of the small Toledo dailies that’s haunted and followed him ever since it’s publication. His story isn’t particularly newsworthy - a plea deal, his things thrown out onto the curb by his mother, and a dead father that he sometimes wishes the article explicitly blamed just so the rest of the world, instead of just him, would know his sins, too. He’s a footnote in the article at best and it isn’t all that difficult an article to find if one sifted even half-heartedly through any search engine for it, but it’s there in all its glory, regardless.

He wonders then if Betty has seen the article, and if she hasn’t, how he can possibly reconcile that with the inquisitive thoroughness she brandishes about like a sword.  

“Look, Jughead,” Kevin starts, turning towards the direction of his own truck and leaving him little choice but to follow. “I don’t need to tell you how I feel about… the stuff your gang did; I’m a cop and you’re a smart guy - I think you know. But I believe in justice and I believe in doing your time. You’ve done yours. So cover up that chip on your shoulder; you’re only wearing it for yourself. No one else cares.”

He watches as Kevin waves over to Archie, gesturing first to himself, then the non-existent watch on his wrist, and finally to the road before turning the key in the ignition. “You want my advice? Besides staying as far away as you can from Alice Cooper?” Kevin asks, and Jughead knows he’s going to get it whatever answer he gives. “Relax. There’s no point in living in the world out here if you’re still so caught up in your locked-up life back there.”

 

* * *

 

Despite his many protests that he’s really not that hungry, and that the diner in Greendale is closer so if they’re going to eat, he’d really rather they go there, he ends up back in Riverdale and at Pop’s with Archie.

 _Betty’s swamped,_ Archie had said. _So we’ll go to her instead - easy fix._

Jughead can tell it’s packed before they even step foot into the diner, a fact that he feels more than he knows.

It’s something he hasn’t felt in a while, this charged hum that takes root in his bones, one that vibrates and thrums against his skin, but it does the trick in bringing him back to the days he’d once scurried and hopped around a diner miles and miles from here, plates lining his arms.

 _Lunch crunch,_ he thinks, the buzz of conversation and loud laughter all all but assaulting him as they step across the threshold.

“Anything?” Archie asks, head turning sharply and wildly from left to right.

He takes a more measured approach, scanning the small diner car with a slow deliberateness. _He’s taller than Archie_ , he realizes as he does. Archie’s shoulders may be broader than his and the circumference of one Archie’s biceps might equal both of his combined, but he _is_ taller.

Jughead doesn’t know if there’s a strange kind of victory to be found in that, but it’s a nice thing to note while standing next to the guy who is his superior in the physical sense in every way.

 _Almost_ every way.

“There,” Jughead says, pointing over to a newly unoccupied back booth.

He isn’t faster than Archie though, nor does he move through Pop’s as deftly, and he lags behind as Archie twists and ducks around the plates flying in every and all directions.

“Good eye,” Archie praises, sliding onto the bench. “And by the way, you don’t need to come back to the site with me later. Moose said he might be able to put in some hours after lunch. I appreciate the help this morning though, dude, seriously. I know you have stuff to do.”

Jughead shrugs. “I don’t mind. It’s not like I-”

“Arch, hey, I’m so sorry about lunch,” her voice interrupts, hands busily stacking up the dirty plates and balled-up napkins tossed on the table. “I didn’t think it’d be this busy today and Veronica is god knows where. I mean, yeah, I know, Centerville, but I have no idea why. Honestly, you might want to check in with her, she’s not calling me back, and since when has she ever gone to Centerville just for kicks?”

Wrapped up and distracted by her quick ramble and fluttering fingertips, he moves instinctively, reaching his own hand across the table in an effort to stack the coffee cups and plates out of her reach. It all happens quickly - a brush of his hand over hers as she grabs for the mug he’s going for, a loud and unhelpful exclamation from Archie to watch for the half-full cup, a jerk of her elbow, and water, quickly spreading over the table.

“Oh my god!” Betty says, jumping back and hand quickly flying over her heart. “I didn’t see you.”

He offers a pitiful wave as the water drips over the table’s edge and onto his jeans. Across from him, he’s vaguely aware of Archie throwing a handful of napkins over the spill, face brimming with held-back laughter and as red as the ketchup bottle Jughead wouldn’t mind whacking him with right now.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” she says, and there’s a beat that he thinks she might be looking at him a little too intensely before she shakes her head and sweeps up the stack of plates. “I’ll go get a rag for that.”

And with a quick flip of her ponytail that leaves a whiff he can only describe as the cocktail of every warm and wonderful smell that makes up a diner, she’s gone again, shuffling quickly towards the kitchen in her mustard-stained Converse.

Instinctively, his thumb and middle finger fall to either temple in an effort to push away the embarrassment.

“Nice.”

“Shut up.”

“Nothing going on, huh?”

“There isn’t.”

“Well whatever that was,” Archie tells him, leaning back against the bench and gesturing to the mess spread out over the table top, “definitely wasn’t nothing. It also wasn’t smooth, by the way.”

“You done now?”

“Not even close, I have so many more of-”

“Shh, she’s coming back,” he hisses, twisting back to face forward.

“Sorry about that,” Betty rushes out, and when her arms stretch and lean across the table, quickly swiping up the excess water, he turns his eyes straight into his lap in an effort to look away from the line of lean muscle in her arm. “You guys ready to order?”

“I think I know what Jug here wants,” Archie quips.

The hand he’d been resting his chin on falls loudly to the table, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Betty’s eyes narrow in confusion.

“A burger?” she guesses slowly.

“Inside joke,” Jughead covers. “And yeah, a burger, please.”

She looks like she doesn’t quite believe him, he thinks, but unsure of what else to do with the information, too. “Arch?” she asks eventually with a slight shake of her head.

“Uh, same,” Archie says, still looking all too pleased with himself. “Oh, and can you add bacon?”

At that, Betty’s frown sets in deeply. “I really think a turkey sandwich would be healthier. You’ve already had three burgers this week. Or a salad! I can added grilled chicken to it and-”

“Betty,” Archie warns lightly.

“I can add bacon to it. Croutons, too. Really, Arch, it’s not good for you to-”

“-I’m just going to tell Pop myself if you don’t.”

Jughead watches as she taps her pen against the edge of her order pad, lip twisting in thought. “Fine,” she relents. “But only because it’s foundation day.”

Betty keeps her elbow tucked neatly into her side as she writes, hand quickly moving across the little page, and he finds himself thinking about the disconnect there. He knows that she likely has more than a handful of individualized orders to remember, but his is simple enough, and he knows without a doubt that all of Archie’s orders, whatever the day and whatever Archie’s mood, are all already ingrained into her mind.

And he knows her mind - its quickness and its tendency to remember even the most inconsequential of details.

She doesn’t need to write those few words down, Jughead thinks. But he thinks that she probably likes and wants to, whether consciously or not.

 

* * *

 

“She’s, uh, a little bossy,” Jughead starts, a heartbeat before Archie dives into another round of mocking entirely at his expense.

Archie shrugs easily. “She always has been, but you get used to it. The whole town used to joke that she started talking just so that she could tell me to talk. But she means well, and it’s a nice reminder at the end of the day.”

“Of what?”

“That she cares. I don’t think she’d dare to change just anyone’s order. She does it with Veronica, too. And her parents, my dad. It’s nice to be part of Betty’s list.”

 _Archie’s the captain of Betty’s list,_ Jughead thinks, but he holds off on saying that.

Jughead jumps at the sound of Archie’s phone vibrating against the table top, elbow jerking back into the bench and heel into the baseboard. It’s something he wishes he could get over - the fact that he scares so easily.

 _Veronica,_ he notes quickly, and that Archie has a rainbow of hearts on either side of her name has him wanting to throw some of that mocking the redhead had been doling out earlier right back at him.

But Archie lunges for his phone, fingers skidding and scrambling as he slides it into his hand, and Jughead thinks that this might not be the right moment for any of that.

“Ronnie?” he says, and that Archie had betrayed absolutely none of the franticness in his voice at any moment before picking up the phone has him thinking that the guy might be a bit better at controlling his emotions than he’d initially thought. “Where are you? _Why?_ I’m just asking! Stop - no, I’m not trying to micromanage-”

It’s all he’s privy to before Archie stands, weaving his way through the diner seamlessly as he makes his way out to the parking lot, lines etched hard into his forehead and with a finger stuck in his ear.

 

* * *

 

Over the rim of his water cup that he only pretends to sip from as his eyes graze the diner-car, Jughead wonders just how many of them know.

It’s a small town, and he’d wager that most of them probably do.

News, he assumes, travels fast in places like these, whether or not it’s printed in the four pages of the weekly _Register_.

But, he thinks, even if they _do_ all know, there’s less staring and whispering than he’d imagined there’d be.

_A lot less, if he’s being honest._

There’s an eye or two thrown his way, a handful of quizzical looks that even he’ll concede might have a thing or two to do with the fact that he’s looking so intently at people he doesn’t know, but if there’s pity or disdain, he isn’t finding it.

It’s not unlike the first time he’d walked into Pop’s in broad daylight, Jughead thinks, and how he’d almost been disappointed that all the stares and the dropped utensils out of sheer shock from his presence in their diner, in their town, were just figments of his imagination.

In Chicago, in Toledo, when he’d been a nameless face in a sea of other nameless faces who’d been in no way beholden to him or each other, it’d been easy enough to slink off and hide away in the shadows; he’d stay quiet and out of mind until that little pocket of the world caught wind of who he was. Then, when they inevitably did, he’d be out of sight; on to the next city.

But here - in this place where everyone over the age of forty has watched the waitress at Pop’s and the foreman at Andrew’s Construction grow up, this place where he’s so acutely aware that he’s not from and that he has no history with - these people are each other’s keepers.

And, he’d thought, that would come with a collective shunning when they all learned what kind of person had come into their pretty little town; armed with pitchforks at his back until he rolled right on back out of Nowhere.

But maybe, he thinks, a week spent holed up in the Muggs’ Motel is enough for him to become old news.

Or maybe, he was really never news at all.

“Enjoy!” Betty’s voice behind him says brightly, and when he jerks at the sound of it, her mouth rounds in a little _‘o’._ “Sorry - jumpy; I knew that. My bad.”

 _At least she knows why now,_ he thinks as she bends her knees, bringing her plate-covered arms closer to the table.

“You’re just doing your job,” he tells her.

“Still.” She pauses then, hands fidgeting with the hem of her apron. He thinks that she just might have a thing or two to say to him, or a the very least, to ask him, but he also thinks that she knows that a crowded diner with too many an open ear isn’t the place to do so.

“Tell Archie not to pick out the lettuce,” Betty says eventually. “I added a little extra, but keep that between you and me.”

 _Extra,_ he thinks, _is putting it lightly since Archie’s plate looks something like an overgrown garden._ As it is, he can’t really see the burger over the mound of leaves she’d thrown on top of it.

“You know, I think he just might figure this one out,” he says wryly, and when she laughs - a small, light little chuckle to herself, but a laugh nonetheless - he finds himself with his coffee mug at his lips to keep from smiling too widely. “Thanks, Betty.”

He looks to the window, trimmed with a thin line of neon lights ready and waiting to welcome the night, and to Archie, still pacing with his wide hand gestures to no one at all and his furrowed brow.

 _The right thing to do,_ Jughead knows, _is to wait._ Archie looks like he’s just about rounding the place where he hangs up in overwrought anger.

But what he _wants_ to do is to take a bite - just a small one. An innocuous one.

Cracking out his knuckles before reaching for the burger because he’s nothing if not a master at this, he carefully brings the burger near his nose before inhaling deeply.

He’s so hungry.

A little bite, he bargains with himself, one that’s small enough that he can stack a few fries near it and Archie will be none the wiser to.

It takes him a while to notice it, and in comparison to the pile of lettuce dominating Archie’s little cabbage patch, it’s small potatoes. But it’s more than enough to draw out a smile from him when he puts his finger on what that foreign, unfamiliar taste is.

The distinct and nutty flavor of a whole wheat bun.

 

* * *

 

When he’s showered and feeling entirely worse for the wear, Jughead looks at the half-packed duffle bag staring back at him mockingly from the bed. He’d ended up refusing the small, crumpled wad of twenties Archie had handed him - it just hadn’t felt right - but the extra hundred or so he’s now short of isn’t making it any easier for him to get up and leave.

It’s the twilight hour now; the way the low and dimmed sun falls through his window like the slow and dying stream of the last of the coffee in the pot trickling out tells him so. It’s the last of the day’s sun slipping away right onto the floor, the triangle of light on the floral carpet growing narrower as it fades into nothingness.

Jughead inhales deeply, frowning at the stale air as he looks around the shoebox of a motel room. It’d take him less than an hour to throw everything he calls his own into his bag.

He could leave when the day gives full way to night, and no one would be the wiser.

He could leave right now and the same would probably be true.

But he doesn’t want to.

Jughead rises to his feet slowly and slides his computer into his bag, hand pausing and stilling over the notebook on the desk as he does. He hasn’t used it since that day he’d written in it down by the river, but he’s kept it on his desk as a reminder since - of the life that he gets to live and that she doesn’t, of the river and of the field, of that slow, quiet day.

Of her, if he’s being honest.

And who else to be honest to but himself.

With quick fingers and one decisive motion, he detaches a page from the book and tucks it carefully beside the flat shell of his computer before slinging his bag over his shoulder.

At the end of the day - the end of the literal day sliding away quickly against his floor - he really doesn’t feel like leaving; he isn’t ready to give up the quiet beauty hidden in the seams of this town. He will eventually, he supposes; he’ll grow tired of the flowers and they’ll all start looking the same, he’ll start craving a world that’s a little faster and a little dirtier, and he’ll be ready to go then.

But doesn’t feel ready for that today.

What he does feel like is going to the one place in town that’s open for dinner.

 

* * *

 

He’s not even surprised that she’s still at Pop’s. He sees her car first - the blue Mustang that he finds himself smiling at it when he does, so much richer with significance and meaning because he knows the story behind it now.

She’s not just someone who bought a vintage car on a whim because she liked the color or the hood ornament.

She’s a woman who took scrap metal and painstakingly and lovingly made it into a car; she’s a daughter who spends her time on the weekend at the garage with her father instead of sleeping in, and if anyone deserves an undisturbed weekend snooze, it’s her.

The bell overhead chimes when he pushes the door to Pop’s open, a soft, lulling sound that he can barely hear over the chatter and bustle of dinnertime.

She’s in front of him then, ponytail swishing against her shoulders before he even realizes it’s her, plates in either hand and wrist.

“Be with you in a sec,” Betty says, hurriedly and breathlessly. The dish he’s come to learn simply as Pop’s chicken supreme surprise wobbles precariously on her bare right wrist. “Anywhere that’s open.”

Jughead grabs for the plate instinctively, only registering his movements when he feels heat blossom across his fingers. “Hey, slow down,” he tells her, reaching for the plate balancing on her other arm before nodding down to her red skin. “Diner 101, Betty - dish towels over your arms so they don’t look like that. Where are these going?”

Betty smiles at him then, a wide and entirely grateful one he thinks he hasn’t really earned for just taking some plates off her hand. “Second booth on the right,” she says, head tilting in the direction for him to follow. “And I’ll have you know that I had that - I haven’t dropped a plate in over a year.”

“Well, I just saved your streak,” he says, wobbling the plate in his right hand slightly at her. “This one was about to fall.”

“My impeccable balance wouldn’t have let it,” she tells him, a small smile budding on her lips as she takes the plates from him and matches them with the diners. “By the way, that booth back there is free.”

Jughead stares far too long at the spot on his arm that she bumps with her elbow in an effort to get his attention.

“Or there’s the bar,” Betty says slowly, looking around at him with narrowed eyes when he fails to respond.

“The booth,” he says eventually. “The booth is great.”

There’s an amused little twitch at her mouth at that - her reaction, he thinks, to an overly emphatic word to describe a simple table in a diner.

“The usual?” she asks, and he almost misses her question when he lingers far too long over the phrase he’d never expected to hear from her directed at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s - yeah.”

Betty looks at him then, the red from the sign behind her catching in the whites of her eyes as she does. _She’s close to him,_ he finds himself thinking when he feels the weight of the dinner crowd’s eyes on them; he can hear the sound of her shallow breaths even over the rattle and rumble of the diner.

“Coming up,” she says, but softly, and only to him.

 

* * *

 

Jughead starts when she slides a pink glass from the edge of the table over to him, reaching out a hand to grab the glass just before it makes contact with the ketchup bottle.

“They say humble pie comes in all forms.”

Jughead flips his computer screen shut as she folds her hands over the table. “Never heard that one before.”

“I believe it’s by the same person who told you that you could tell a lot about a person based on where they sit in a diner.”

At that, he smiles, almost in triumph. He’d guessed that she’d made that one up that night the rest of Riverdale had been on the other side of Pop’s door, but he hadn’t been completely sure until now.

“Ah, her. She’s a fount of diner one-liners, I’ll give her that.”

“So you’ve been a stranger,” Betty says quietly, voice turning serious.

“I was just here a few hours ago.”

He’d rephrase if he could - that had all come out a little too familiar for his liking.

“I meant this past week. I haven’t seen you around; or at least, not when I’ve been here. Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Jughead says, throwing in a shrug for good measure as he leans back against the bench. “Just - busy writing. You know, when the muse strikes, it strikes.”

“Oh,” Betty responds slowly; she doesn’t quite believe him, he can tell. “Good. That’s good - I’m glad.” Then quietly, so much so that he has to tip forward slightly to catch her words - “I was worried you’d left because of me.”

He does his best to hold his expression steady, acutely aware of just how much effort he’s putting into what shouldn’t be a Herculean task. His heart, though, the heart he’s grateful that she can’t see or hear, beats in overtime. “Why would you think that?”

“You didn’t have to tell me anything, but you did,” she says quietly, folding her hands across the table, too. “You told me the truth when I asked. You were honest with me, Jughead, and I value that. I’m sorry if the way I acted made you think otherwise.”

He thinks about telling her that it hadn’t, but that doesn’t feel right after what she’d just told him about honesty. Instead, he shrugs, flannel creating a sharp spark of static against the red vinyl. “It’s not like I deserved anything more,” he says.

And that’s as plain and honest as his truth gets.

“You deserved understanding, and a fair chance to tell your story without my judgment,” Betty says, fingers on her right hand curling around her left palm. “I’m not going to brush what you did under the rug. Maybe you made a bad decision or two back then - maybe more than that, even. I don’t know. But I wanted you to know that I don’t think whatever happened back then and whatever you did defines who you are now.”

“Doesn’t it?” he hears himself asking softly.

Betty turns her eyes down then, lip twisting under her teeth in thoughtful consideration. His breath hitches as her hand slides across the table before her fingers, coarse and dry to the touch, land gently on his knuckles. “Your past is a part of you are in the whole is greater than the sum, we contain multitudes kind of way,” she says quietly. “But no, Jughead, I don’t think that it defines any of us. And I don’t think it defines you.”

 _She looks so earnest,_ he thinks when he looks to her, _like she just might be believing her own words for someone other than just him._

“Anyhow,” Betty says, drawing her hand away from his before sliding the milkshake over to his side of the table, “here.”

He blinks, looking down at the pink glass in front of him before back at her again. “That’s for me?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Why?” He wishes that he’d sound far less dumbfounded in these moments.

She waits until he turns his eyes from the glass over to her before answering, her voice slow and sweetly lilting when she does. “As a thank you for giving Pop’s another chance.”

There’s a part of him that thinks he’d be content sitting there and thinking about those words and what she’d really meant by them for the rest of the night. But across from him, her bottom lip is tucked slightly under her teeth, and she’s looking at him with as much eagerness and anticipation as he’s ever seen on anyone, so he reaches for the pink glass.

 _A strawberry shake_ , he notes, _a flavor that he’s never liked;_ strawberry-anything, in his opinion, more often than not comes out tasting like Pepto Bismol rather than the fruit itself.

But there’s care in every waiting sip in that glass - in the strength she’d thrown into carving out ice cream from the frozen containers, in the carefully swirled mop of whipped cream sitting on top a bed of pink, in the delicately placed cut strawberry hanging off the glass, and so he takes a healthy sip, holding his face steady as he waits for the medicinal tang to hit his mouth.

But it never comes.

It’s just strawberry on his tongue - slightly sweet, a little tart, and something else, too, that he can’t quite define.

“It’s good,” he tells her, hearing surprise in his own voice.

The entirety of her face brightens at that. “Yeah?”

“Great even.”

Bowing his head down to the straw, he sips again.

 _It’s care,_ Jughead thinks as the liquid rolls over his tongue. It’s not a distinct taste, there isn’t anything he he can definitively point and compare it to in this world, but it’s there regardless, making the sweet a little sweeter, the tart a little more tart.

He can’t remember the last time anyone made anything for him just because and without a receipt attached to it, and he thinks that might be what he’s tasting now.

Strawberry, and the care she’d put into this milkshake, just for him.

 

* * *

 

She circles back to him when the last customer leaves - a downtrodden, sad-looking man who’d spent the better part of the hour picking at the flakes on his pie crust. Jughead sees her shuffling in his direction, ponytail sagging along with her shoulders, but he does his best not to stare at her as she approaches.

“Mind if I sit?” Betty asks, pushing the heel of her left foot against the toes on her right as she stretches out her calves.

He waves his hand to the seat across from him. “Not at all.”

She sighs as she sits, propping her back up against the wall and stretching her legs out on the bench. He doesn’t know if she would mind him talking to her right now, or if she’d just rather have a quiet moment to herself at the end of her night without interruptions from him and his voice; so with a hand over his screen, he slowly pushes it shut, giving her the time to decide.

He winces as the muscles in his arm work with the small movement, and fleetingly, he thinks how truly bad for him it is that he regularly survives on a diet of burgers and diner pickings without any real exercise factored in.

 _Better routine starts tomorrow_ , he tells himself.

“Sore?” Betty asks, voice lagging with tiredness, but still laced with obvious sympathy.

“I don’t know that I’ll be able to type tomorrow,” Jughead says. “I’m not the physical type and before you say it, I know - shocking, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she says, and he thinks he might imagine it but her eyes quickly dart from his right arm to his left. “But it gets better. Give it a day or two and you won’t feel a thing.”

“You’ve done this before?” he asks, wincing as he gestures to either arm.

“Tons of times, pun intended.”

“Seriously?”

She lays her hands flat against the Formica, fanning her fingers out widely. It takes him a moment to catch on - he’s distracted by the little smile twisting at her lips - but he does eventually.

No finger taps.

“Fair enough,” Jughead says, nodding his head in concession. “And going down to Archie’s sites is… fun for you?”

Betty shrugs. “Sure. If I have time, I don’t mind it. These hands are very good at laying bricks,” she jokes, holding them up in front of her face as she wiggles her fingers.

He feels heat rise to his cheeks as he fleetingly wonders what else they’re good at.

“I tend to avoid heavy lifting days,” she continues. “But honestly, getting dirt under your nails is therapeutic from time to time, you know? And Archie’s so busy now - we all are. Going out there is one of the only ways I really get to spend time with him, just me and him. I haven’t been out there in a while though.”

It’s a friendship he doesn’t know if he’s ever quite seen the likes of before - Archie and Betty and the ends of the earth that he knows without a doubt they’d go to for each other. It’s a kind of friendship he can’t say he’s ever experienced for himself, either.

 _No Serpent left behind, unless one unwittingly leads their leader to his demise and ends up in the slammer_ , he supposes.

“By the way, speaking of Archie,” Jughead begins, smile breaking across his face in betrayal of what he’s about to say, “I happened to learn a thing or two about you today, Marie Osmond.”

Betty’s hands quickly fly to her already-pink face, covering her eyes with the pads of her fingers as she does. “Oh god,” she says, voice muffled behind her palms. “I’m going to kill him.”

“That was actually Kevin. The - what was it called - sad chipmunk face was courtesy of Archie.”

“I’m going to kill them both.”

“So were you a little bit country or a little bit rock and roll?”

“I’m not engaging in this,” she says primly, quirk at the corner of her mouth betraying her amusement.

“I think you were a little bit country.”

“I won’t dignify that with an ans-”

“-then again, I could see you being a little rock and roll.”

“We’d change the pronouns,” Jughead hears her mumble after a beat. “But we’d switch off from time to time.”

And at that, he no longer can help it - he laughs then, a true and hearty one that builds from the base of his stomach and has him doubling over every time he tries to tell himself to stop.

“Laugh it up,” Betty instructs, “it’s your turn now.”

“For?”

“An embarrassing childhood story. You know two of mine so-” she trails off then, finishing her sentence with a wave of her hand in his direction instead.

“Nice try,” he says, leaning back against the bench. “But no, not happening.”

“Oh, come on! It’s only fair - cosmic balance and all that.”

“God forbid I upset that.”

“Truly,” she says seriously, holding her face steady. “So pony up.”

As his childhood goes, it’s slim pickings when it comes to endearingly humorous tales. He has a handful, probably far less than the bucketfuls Betty has, but this one just about fits her parameters.

He doesn’t think it’s particularly funny story himself, but once upon a time, his family had found it something of a riot.

He wonders what they think of it now.

“You know my name?” Jughead starts, and before she has a chance to capitalize on the moment - “nickname, not real name.”

Betty’s lip twitches in what he thinks is amusement. “I’m vaguely aware of it, yes.”

“I didn’t get it just because I had a big head.”

She’s already smiling far too widely for him not even having begun the story yet. “Oh?” she offers, and far too innocently for his liking.

“I wasn’t really a kid who liked toys, not that I had a ton in the first place,” he tells her, bracing himself for her incoming onslaught of laughter. It’s a story he knows in words only rather than memory, but he figures it still counts. “I did like things, though. Spoons, plastic cups, bowls, newspapers - you name it. My favorite was this old maple syrup jug, one of those big, plastic gallon ones with scenic pictures of Vermont on it. I carried that thing around with me everywhere. I took it to preschool. I slept with it.”

“You slept with a maple syrup jug?”

“Every night,” he says, and when she laughs lowly, he finds that he doesn’t even mind that it’s at his expense. It’s a nice, comforting sound, he thinks, and that he can drum up a little laughter from her after she’s been on her feet for hours on end, has him feeling something not far at all from pride.

“Anyhow, legend has it that I put that jug on my head one day. My mother, or maybe my father - I can’t remember - apparently saw some kind of great and uncanny resemblance between my face and that jug. Oh, and my ears and the handle too,” he says, sticking a finger behind his ears and pushing them out slightly. “Thus, Jughead.”

He supposes he really shouldn’t have expected her laughter; she rarely does what he expects her to. She’s shown him kindness when he’d expected her admonition, her bark and bite when he’d been sure she’d let something slide. Now, she’s looking at him with a careful kind of softness, head tilted, and the tip of her ponytail brushing the edge of her collarbone.

“Names are such funny things, don’t you think?”

That hadn’t been the response he’d been expecting, either. “How so?”

“Our names are such a huge part of our identity. They’re what everyone in the world refers to us by. They’re the letters we give out to others that tells them exactly who we are. But so few of us actually have any hand at all in deciding our own names. Elizabeth was decided for me the same way your name was decided for you.”

“True,” he says slowly, leaning forward as he searches for her through line.

“I don’t think your story is embarrassing, Jughead. It’s beautiful, if you think about it - it’s incredibly special, and not one that many of us share. I mean, how often do we get to pick our own names for ourselves?”

He breathes in slowly, thinking through her carefully chosen words. He’s heard the story he’d just told her countless times - from his parents, his grandparents, even JB on occasion - but never has it been anything more than a tale to poke fun of the round, strange little kid he’d been back then. It’s never been a beautiful story in his mind, nor an incredibly special one.

But he isn’t surprised that this woman, the same one who still loves the nearing-empty field of wildflowers, who still finds the heart and soul to whip up a milkshake for him at the tail end of her shift, found the beauty in something he’s only seen as ugly up until this point.

He’s good at finding what’s hidden, he’s always been told.

But he thinks she might be just as good at it, too.

 

* * *

 

He’d flipped his computer back open twenty-two minutes ago, surprising even himself when something ended up sticking on the page in front of him. He’d thought that her presence there would’ve had him typing out the same sentence over and over again just so that it’d look like he was doing something.

But there are words on the page - words that he doesn’t half mind - even with her there, too.

Across from him, she’s reading, pen poised between her teeth and brow furrowed down in concentration. Between her splayed fingers and palm, he makes out enough letters and scraps of words - the _S_ from ‘sir’ and _‘yle’_ from Doyle - to deduce what has her so engrossed, and that this woman seems to have a particular affinity for mysteries doesn’t at all surprise him.

He wouldn’t peg her for Nora Ephron’s and Nicholas Sparks’ - there has to be something more for her in the books she reads, he thinks. Something that has her along for the ride, something that makes her think and tick - a riddle or a mystery that she challenges herself to solve before anyone else does.

Jughead watches as she draws the pen from her mouth then before crouching over and carefully penning a note in the book’s margin. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if she’d done the same to his.

He’s never been one for writing in books himself, but he finds himself hoping that she has.

“How’s the book coming along?” Betty asks, folding the book over her finger, holding her page, as she tips her head back against the wall.

Jughead shrugs. “It’s… coming,” he says. “Slowly. Probably too slowly in my editor’s opinion, though.”

“And is this one set in a prison, too?” she asks. Her voice, he notes, doesn’t once falter over the word he thinks she’ll pause at.

He shakes his head, tipping down his screen down over his hands a few degrees. “It’s in Chicago.”

“Why there?”

“Any city would’ve worked,” Jughead says. “But I know Chicago - not well, but well enough. I try to write what I know - it feels more authentic that way. It feels more like me.”

“And it’s a mystery, isn’t it?” she asks, tipping the back of her pen towards him.

At that, he smiles. He’d meant what he’d said that night at Archie and Veronica’s - that he truly hadn’t been sure whatever words decided to come out of him next would morph themselves into a mystery. But he concedes that she’d been right, too - it’s what he knows better than anything else. It’s what he knows how to write.

It’s what he likes writing.

“It’s a mystery,” he admits.

“Well,” she says, quietly but thoughtful, “I’ll be looking out for it one day.”

He doesn’t expect the acute pang of melancholy that comes with her words, and the understanding that follows quickly after - that whenever this next book of his hits the shelves, he’ll be long gone from her life.

That she’ll be long gone from his.

“By the way,” he says, brushing off the heavy realization as he reaches into his bag, “I brought you something.”

He thinks she looks confused as she slides the piece of paper over to herself, eyes narrowing as she finds nothing on either side of the page he’d torn from his notebook, ends still frayed from the ring marks.

“It’s-”

“A blank page,” Jughead finishes for her, raising his eyes to hers slowly. “You said that you miss those at the motel that night. I don’t know that there’s much I can do about the fact that you think your hair smells like grease, although my mom used to use Mane and Tail if that’s at all helpful. But I do have a ton of those to spare.”

He watches as she flips the paper over again, this time more slowly, almost with a careful, delicate reverence. He isn’t sure that he’s ever seen someone so interested in a blank piece of notebook paper before, but he’s glad that he could be the one to give it to her.

“Thank you, Jughead,” she says quietly, eyes rising from the paper to meet his.

He lets himself feel the tangibility of the moment for a heartbeat or two. “You’re welcome,” he tells her. “Anyhow, it’s just me and you here - no Blossoms, no blood feud, no cowboy-hat wearing dad - so go ahead and write if you want to. Our secret.”

It’s a moment that he’ll remember forever he thinks, no matter how near or far he is from this place and her - the moment she tugs her pen from her mouth, slowly and so tentatively - and brings it down onto the page, blue ink flowing under her steadily moving hand.

 

* * *

 

She’s fascinating when she’s writing, he finds. Possibly even more so than when she’s reading.

There’s a different kind of concentration painted over her features - a slightly narrowed left eye as her hand pauses over a word her mind searches for, a quick nod of her head when she inevitably finds it. She’s sitting straighter, too, he notices, tipped forward with anticipation, maybe even excitement.

 _It’s a good look on her,_ he observes. Betty with a pen in her hand and concentration on her face.

He wonders, as she slides the pen back between her teeth again, what she might be writing about.

“Here,” Jughead says, not quite even realizing he’s circling his fingers around the bottom of the glass until he’s sliding it towards the center of the table. “For your chewing purposes.”

At the sound of his voice landing on top of the quiet whirr of the ceiling fan and low, steady buzz from the radio, she jerks back from the table and the page. “What?”

“You’re chewing on your pen,” he repeats. “It’s bad for your teeth.”

Betty looks at him first before swinging her gaze over to the glass, lips curling up slightly in slow understanding. “Jughead Jones, writer, maple syrup jug-wielder, and orthodontist, huh?"

Jughead shrugs, feeling an rogue smile of his own tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I am in fact a man of many talents.”

She laughs lowly then, the point of her pen resting against the edge of her bottom lip as she does, before reaching out to slide the glass in her direction.

And after two measured and dainty sips, she pushes the milkshake, still half-full, back towards him.

He doesn’t know if it’s his sleep-deprived addled mind or his strange tendency to find what’s hidden, but he thinks that the glass sitting just past center on his side of the table just might be her waiting for him to take his turn.

He leans forward this time instead of simply reaching for the glass and draws up the drink through the straw, wondering fleetingly if she’d taste at all like the strawberry on his tongue if he kissed her now.

He thinks that she just might.

Then, he pushes the milkshakes, a little warm but still sweet, back past the center of the table.

He doesn’t expect her to take it again. She’s so careful with what she says, with her actions; she’s thoughtful, and in more ways than one, almost to a fault. She’ll think through what it means if she does, like he’s doing now. She’ll weigh the pros and cons, and just like that night at the motel room, will decide to do the right thing.

But after one hundred and twenty three slow breaths, she reaches across the table for the glass, pen threaded through her fingers, eyes still cast down on the notebook page, and sips, too.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goldenrod symbolizes encouragement.
> 
> Suggested listening  
> “Somebody Nobody Wants” - Dion  
> “King of the Road” - Roger Miller  
> “Folsom Prison Blues” - Johnny Cash  
> “Tupelo Honey” - Van Morrison
> 
> Bonus  
> “A Little Bit Country” - Donny and Marie Osmond (worth the watch if you’re curious as to what exactly Betty and Archie were doing on the playground).


	7. Asphodel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to bugggghead for beta'ing this chapter! She's read upwards of 20k words for me this week and I could not be more grateful. 
> 
> Warning - the last scene of the chapter revolves around some heavy themes that will be more fully explored in further chapters.

Pop asks her with the most apologetic, sorrowful look on his face, prefacing it with the fact that he’s terribly sorry, but if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for her, would she mind taking the late shift for the next couple of weeks?

Betty stamps a wide smile across her face when Pop approaches her - she knows the wide-bellied, grandfather-to-all who tries to send her home early from her shifts almost every other day wouldn’t be asking if he had any other choice.

She doesn’t mind, she tells him - not at all. And in a way, she doesn’t - the nights are slow, but they’re less busy than the breakfast or lunch rushes.

Though she knows herself - she’ll inevitably be picking up a few of those, too.

She’s so used to spending the night shift by herself, with only the fan, the radio, and a book, sometimes a stack of newspapers to keep her company, that she isn’t quite sure what to make of it when he begins showing up on the steps of Pop’s at midnight on the dot, bag slung over his shoulders and hands tucked in his pocket.

So for the past week, it’s been him and her, and the soft patter of his fingers against the keyboard swirled in with the old, familiar sounds she knows so well.

And, she finds herself thinking every night when the bell rings moments before he looks to her, almost as though he’s searching for her permission to be there, that it’s nice having some real company to help her fill the quietness of the nights.

Tonight, he’s on time, stepping past the diner’s threshold with a little more confidence than he’s had nights before. She’s turned away from him in one of the back booths, but she doesn’t need to see him to hear the growing steadiness in his footfalls as they make their way over to her.

“Didn’t you fill those two nights ago?” he asks, sliding into the seat across from her, nodding towards the salt shakers she has lined up in front of her like soldiers at the front lines, ready for battle.

She smiles at his greeting - no hi, no hey, no how’s it going Betty - just something easy; something casual, and not at all unlike how she might greet Archie or Veronica.

“I did,” Betty says, almost mournfully. “But this town likes its salt.”

“But two days? That’s a collective heart attack waiting to happen.”

“Coming from the man who’s had four burgers this week.”

“Hey,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging up in amusement, “whole wheat each time. I’m the picture of health.”

At that, she feels a rush of heat rise to her cheeks. It’d been unspoken up until that moment - the fact that she’s been subbing out Pop’s standard-issue plain white hamburger buns with sprouted whole wheat ones for him, and throwing a few extra tomatoes and lettuce on there, too. She knows he knows, but until now, he’s never said anything about it.

“Still,” she says primly, spinning the caps back on the salt shakers, moving her hands down the line methodically. “A salad every now and then probably wouldn’t hurt.”

“That’s a euphemism, isn’t it?” he says. “It’s okay, you can tell me if I’m getting chubby.”

“No, no!” Betty responds quickly, and even though she knows he’s joking, it isn’t in her to have anyone assuming she thinks they’re fat or otherwise. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

And with Jughead, at least, she truly means it. It hasn’t escaped her notice that he’s been down at the Greendale site with Archie more than a handful of times the past week, and that there’s a hint of a tan painted across his skin, now, and more definition than she’s seen on him before curving on his biceps and shoulder blades, too.

That much she can admit to herself - she’s a woman, and she notices these things. And he’s been looking good.

But still - “that really isn’t what I mean,” Betty throws in for good measure.

“I believe you,” he tells her. “But hey, if you wanted to send a salad over my way the next time I’m in, I won’t complain.”

She wonders if there’s some kind of hidden meaning there, maybe some kind of subtle approval of her tweaks and substitutions to his food, maybe some form of gratitude, even, instead of just his putting up with her and her tendency to intervene.

Betty rises from the bench, weaving the heads of the salt shakers through her fingers and tipping some into her apron pocket in an effort to not have to double back. “I’ll be reminding you of this moment when you’re crying into your chicken Caesar,” she tells him.

“Duly noted. Hey, question,” he calls over to her as she’s sliding the salt shakers back into place over at the countertop.“What’s a girl’s name?”

“What?”

“A girl’s name,” he repeats. “Like for a minor character.”

“Oh. Um.” Betty frowns, looking from left to right for anything that might help her. If she’s being honest, the first name that comes to mind is her own; the second and third are Polly’s and her mother’s. But as for minor characters for his book, none of those feel particularly right.

As she’s spanning the expanse of the diner car, her eyes fall on the cleaned-out jar of spaghetti sauce sitting next to the register, and the bouquet she’d cut from her own garden a few days ago. _It isn’t a particularly great bunch_ , Betty thinks - she normally puts a little more care into matching up the colors, the petals, the meanings, and she hadn’t with this one; she’d been running late that evening.

The petals her gaze falls to first, white, oblique-shaped, and bisected right down the middle by an unwavering burnt-sierra line, are flowers she hadn’t even remembered she’d cut for the bunch. They’re beautiful, she thinks, and she’s always liked these despite the morbid meaning they carry.

“Asphodel,” she says eventually.

“Asphodel?”

“It’s a name,” Betty defends, plucking the flower from the bunch and pointing it towards him, petals facing front. “And a flower.” Between her fingers, she twirls the narrow stem for emphasis, watching as the slender petals turn, spinning around like a pinwheel in the wind.

He looks over at her, unconvinced. “What’s your second choice?”

She looks again to the little bouquet, eyeing the few sprigs of lavender, and stems of Blue Columbines bursting forth with a firework of white petals, inlaid with a delicate blue that surround and bloom near the asphodels. But it’s the single, snowy little daisy, bright yellow center peeking out onto the world that keeps drawing her eye back, and that, she figures, is as good a reason to pick it as any.

“Daisy, then,” she says, “and all the fictional history that goes along with it.”

 _“The Great Gatsby,”_ he says, leaning back against the bench and drumming his fingers against the table; a challenge, she thinks.

_“Daisy Miller.”_

_“Pokémon,”_ he counters, a near boyish smile on his face.

She isn’t that easily beat. “I thought the girl’s name was Misty.”

“Ah, but her sister,” he says, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“Fair enough,” she concedes. _“Dukes of Hazzard.”_

It might be the neon light over his head, she thinks, and the shadow it’s casting long across the floor, but she thinks she just might’ve seen him blush at that.

_“Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”_

_“Thomas the Tank Engine.”_

He laughs lowly at her answer before tipping his head back against the wall. “Hmm,” he hums, tapping his pointer fingers rhythmically on the table as he thinks. “I’m out.”

Her lips quirk in anticipation of her answer. “ _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_ ,” Betty says, smiling.

Jughead frowns, tipping his head over at her slightly in confusion. “There’s no Daisy in _Caged Bird_.”

“But there’s a Marguerite,” Betty says knowingly, walking back over to his booth and taking the seat across from him, “which means Daisy in French.”

Jughead blinks at her then, expression taking on the look of someone falling in between shocked and impressed. “Touché,” he surrenders eventually, holding up both hands with his palms facing her. “You win - Daisy it is.”

 

* * *

 

Despite everything that tells her to control and stop the tremble and bounce of her fingers against her thigh, Betty isn’t able to.

She’s passed it every day on the way to Pop’s, to Moose’s dad’s garage, to wherever in this town because the red brick and green-gabled awning anchors the corner of Main Street. But it’s been almost two years since she’s stood in the doorway of the place that she’d once find her way to every day.

With a deeply inhaled breath, Betty reaches for the piece of paper she’s tucked away and folded into her apron, turning it over once between her fingers. It’s a little crumpled now, and slightly torn at the top right corner when she’d tugged it out too fast from her back pocket, but the words are still there.

The feeling is still there.

With a decisive hand at the knob, she turns it and pushes the door to the _Register_ open.

It doesn’t smell the same anymore, Betty notes as the blowback of air rushes at her face. Her feet still remember to step across and over the raised threshold, her eyes still remember where everything goes - the filing cabinet in the right corner, pushed up flush against the wall, the little, tilted footstool her mother kept under the desk to help keep their postures straight.

But her nose doesn’t recognize the place anymore.

Maybe it’s just her mind and the associations it makes without her even realizing it, but she thinks it smells a little like maple syrup.

 _There’s no one here_ , she realizes as she runs her fingertips across the table still standing in the center of the Register - the one her grandfather had, legend has it, made with his own two hands. _It’s well after nine and no one is here._

As it is, _she’s_ only here because the breakfast rush has come and gone.

“Well.” At the familiar but still slightly dreaded voice behind her, Betty turns on her heel, wincing at the sharp squeak her Converse make against the floorboards.

“You’re not the Cooper I was expecting,” Cheryl continues. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Cheryl,” Betty greets, squaring her shoulders as she faces the redhead, acutely aware that she’s standing in front of Cheryl wearing red silk in Monday’s uniform, the one she hasn’t had the chance to toss in the laundry yet. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Surprising,” Cheryl quips. “Don’t you pride yourself on knowing everything there is to know about everyone?”

“Isn’t that you?” she asks, voice turning sickly sweet. Admittedly, Betty knows that kind of flippant comment will make what she thinks might be a lost cause even worse.

But it’s also the truth. And there’s really no better place for the truth than in the _Register’s_ dinky offices.

Her facetiousness earns her one raised, well-penciled eyebrow. “I’m won’t be here for the fourth this year, but I wanted to see my darlings - not that you needed to know.”

“Oh.”

“What can I do for you, Betty?”

She inhales sharply, building up to her words. “Is your father here?”

“You’ve caught him on his Grand Tour month,” Cheryl tells her. “He won’t be back until July.”

Betty wants to groan for many reasons, partly because she isn’t sure what to do with the nerve she’s built up for this moment, and partly because she doesn’t particularly think a month hitting up the South of France and trying to outdo oneself with how drunk one can get at each winery really qualifies as a Grand Tour.

“Your mother, then.”

“Betty Cooper,” Cheryl says slowly, crossing her arms across her chest in a way that Betty thinks, purposefully or not, accentuates Cheryl’s particular assets there, “I do believe you want something.”

Betty sucks in a breath, searching for the nerve that’s been steadily declining ever since the wrong Blossom showed up behind her. “I have a business proposition.”

“Pray tell.”

She’d stopped being afraid of Cheryl after the third grade, when she’d pulled her hair and elicited the most ear-piercing shriek she’s ever had the displeasure of hearing. Despite her tartan skirts and red hair bow and trust fund, Cheryl Blossom, she learned that day, is red-blooded and mortal just like the rest of them.

Betty is not afraid of Cheryl, nor does she feel the need to bend to her whim and hard-piercing gazes that frankly, she wouldn’t mind learning how to throw herself. But like it or not, she finally has something in common with Cheryl after a lifetime of impasse - they’re both aunts to two loud, rambunctious redheads now.

And that calls for at least a little civility on her part.

“I want a column in the _Register_.”

 _The silence_ , Betty thinks, _is tangible enough for her to mold and roll around in her hands like silly putty._

“And fifty cents per word.”

Betty watches as Cheryl taps her red fingernail against her equally red lip - for dramatic effect, she thinks - and maybe, just to watch her squirm, too.

“Why?” Cheryl asks eventually.

“Because,” Betty says, shaking out the thin, four-page paper for emphasis, smiling knowingly at its pathetic little warble, “no one’s reading this. At least, not like they used to when we ran it.”

“Get to the point. And faster than you’re doing now.”

Betty slides the thin, sorry excuse for a newspaper across the table, the very same one she’d once covered with proofs, laid out in neat rows waiting for her parents’ approval. _Like the salt shakers_ , she finds herself thinking. “Your family might think it’s working, Cheryl, but outsourcing copy to Centerville and pinch-hitting writers from Greendale will never help.”

“You may have worked here before, but bold of you to presume to know what this paper needs or wants. You did end up selling it.”

At least with this, she can defend herself. “You know why we did that.”

Cheryl blinks twice at her, face hardened and stoic before relenting with a simple nod. “Continue.”

“More people were reading the paper when we ran it,” Betty continues. “And that’s just a simple fact - I hardly ever see anyone with it at Pop’s anymore. There are more _Gazettes_ than there are _Registers_.”

“And you think a column will fix that?”

“It could,” Betty says. “This town wants heart - it always has.”

“Let me guess - you think you’re it.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Betty says. “But I know that I can write it.”

Cheryl’s right eyebrow raises slowly, a careful, measured rise that as much as Betty doesn’t want to admit it, she finds herself holding her breath through. Cheryl’s always been good at this, she thinks - full of hard stares and waiting games - but that does little to assuage her nervousness now.

It’s one of the most humiliating and humbling things, Betty thinks as she stares down Cheryl, as Cheryl stares her down - to have to crawl to her just to ask if she can play some small part in the thing she’d once taken so much pride in.

But she wants this. Even through all the big sighs Hal Cooper’s big mouth will send her way and all the passive-aggressive, backhanded comments from her mother, and the sheer and utter humiliation of it all, it’s still worth it.

She wants this. And it’s been a long time since she’s done something just for herself.

“Fine,” Cheryl says eventually, voice curt and decisive. “I’ll run it by Mother and see what she thinks.”

Betty holds back the triumphant clap her hands are so desperately itching to do. “It’s all I’m asking,” she says instead.

She watches as Cheryl picks up the paper between her thumb and pointer finger, the slightest and quickest of frowns tugging down the corners of her red lips as she does. Then, with all the assuredness and decisiveness that Betty has always associated Cheryl with, she folds the broadsheet up and slides it to the side without any further consideration.

“Anything to help this pathetic rag,” she hears Cheryl mutter. There’s a beat before Cheryl speaks again, now far too softly and with far too much sympathy for Betty’s liking. “How are you holding up, Betty? Last year, you were-”

“I’m fine,” she interrupts firmly. “Look, Cheryl - don’t do this for me because you feel sorry for me. And don’t do this for me because of the twins, or Polly, or Jason. Do this because you think what I’m proposing will actually help.”

“Please,” Cheryl says, voice once again firm as she tilts her head to the side, a kind of exasperation Betty only hopes she half-achieves when she employs the tactic, “Do I ever do anything I don’t want to do?”

“Good,” Betty says, pulling back her shoulders as she brings her eyes to meet Cheryl’s.

She glances at the clock lightly and quietly ticking away on the wall then, the very same clock her father had found among her grandfather’s things and hung there at age thirteen. Hal Cooper has never been the sentimental type - slow to show emotion, and even slower to use the words to express it - but that, Betty thinks, is one of the only times she’s seen him give in to sentimentality.

 _“Our family built this paper,”_ he’d told her, tapping twice at the clock on the wall. _“That’s the heart of it all, Betty - family. So don’t you forget that.”_

Then, he’d sat back down at his old brick of a computer and continued typing with two fingers only, his expression turned back to carefully controlled.

Now, it’s just telling her that she’s going to have to run the few blocks over to Pop’s because she’s about forty-five seconds away from returning late from her break.

With one last quick and fleeting glance, she turns for the old wood door.

“Betty.”

She pauses, letting herself feel for a moment the wonderful familiarity of the Register’s doorknob in her hand - the same one she’d spent so much of her life reaching for - before turning her head over her shoulder. “What?”

“For the record, I think this a great idea.”

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t know why - maybe it’s the way he walks and the whistling swish of his bag brushing against his jeans, maybe some kind of intuition or clairvoyance - but she knows it’s him walking through the door even with her back turned.

“You’re up early for someone who was up all night,” she says, drawing up a cup and saucer from under the countertop as he half slides, half collapses onto the barstool across from her.

_Up all night with her, making tropical animals out of the straws, but the rest of Riverdale doesn’t need to know that._

He looks downright surprised, she thinks, that she’s there in front of him, pouring his coffee and making conversation. “How are you still here? Didn’t your shift end when I left?”

Betty shrugs. “Pop needed the help. I slept an hour.”

At that, Jughead frowns, and when he reaches his arm out across the counter, she thinks he just might be reaching for her. He doesn’t though; he stops just shy of the hand she has wrapped around the coffee pot.

“Betty, seriously - this isn’t good for you. I can - I don’t know, take over for you if you want. No promises that I won’t break your no-dropping streak but-”

“I’m fine. Thank you, but it’s not necessary.” _But it is sweet though,_ she thinks to herself. _He’s being so sweet._

“Yeah, but-”

“Jughead, really - it’s nothing I haven’t done before. Anyhow,” Betty continues brightly, but with what she thinks is enough of an edge to get her point across - she’s staying, whether he likes it or not and no matter how sweet he’s being, “today’s the day.”

She watches as he glares over at her, the look of a man not perfectly content to just let the subject go, but not wanting to argue with her either written so plainly across his face. “For what?” he asks eventually.

Betty nods at him when he tips his coffee cup towards her in unspoken gratitude. “Your Caesar Salad.”

His eyes narrow before widening back up in understanding. “Oh, that.”

“Mmm, that.”

Jughead holds up his hands, giving her the go-ahead. “Deal’s a deal.”

She thinks about giving him an opt-out because as it is, he looks so forlorn, and she knows all about the disappointment that comes from being denied the food that she’s been dreaming of. But, there’s more than a small part of her that’s just plain curious as to what this man grappling with a salad might look like, too.

 _And_ , she thinks, _nice arms or not, his heart’s probably in desperate need of one._

“Coming up,” she says, detaching the ticket from her pad with a flourish.

 

* * *

 

To his credit, he manages to look at least halfway excited when she places the oversized salad bowl in front of him.

“I added a little bacon.”

“Your kindness knows no bounds,” he jokes before spearing a piece of lettuce.

Between her fingers, she spins her pen, rolling it up and down the length of her thumb. “How is it?”

“You act like I’ve never had a salad before.”

“Well,” she says slowly, “not that I’ve seen.”

“It’s good, Betty,” he tells her, giving the salad leaves a cursory fluff before stabbing around the bowl for another bite. “I like the bacon.”

In her mind, she chastises herself when she feels a ring of heat build under the collar of her uniform; _bacon_ , she thinks, _shouldn’t be something that makes her blush._ And yet, here she is.

“It’s how I like mine. I figured it wouldn’t be fair to just push a bowl of leaves and chicken in front of you when I wouldn’t even do that to myself.”

“My taste buds thank your sense of justice.”

She moves down the expanse of the countertop, stacking dirty plates and cups in an effort to not stare at him while he eats; she knows how much she’d hate that if she were the one sitting on the barstool.

“You seem happy today,” he says when she meanders back in his direction, plastic bin of dishes now balanced against her hip.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Betty thinks about telling him about the column then - it’s on the tip of her tongue and she has a feeling he just might be excited for her - but she decides against it.

She knows how fickle Penelope Blossom may be and she might as well wait until it’s a sure thing, for both his heart and hers.

Betty shrugs instead. “The weekend’s coming up. Why shouldn’t I be happy?”

“I’d wager you’re working through it,” he says, and at that, Betty wonders if he’d hidden away some kind of question in that comment.

“You’d be surprised,” she tells him, tuning her voice to the most nonchalant tone that she can muster. “Just one shift on Friday and Saturday. During daylight hours, too.”

“I’m glad,” Jughead says earnestly. “You deserve a break. By the way - plates.”

“What?”

“Plates behind you.”

“Oh!” she says, turning quickly enough that her skirt billows out around her. “Thanks.”

“Sorry, I’m distracting you.”

“No!” Betty counters, far too emphatically for her liking. “Not at all. It’s nice having you around.” Internally, she groans at his raised eyebrows and coffee cup paused in the air, halfway between his mouth and table. “I meant that it’s nice having someone to talk to, you know, to fill the time and - oh, crap,” she mumbles, looking to the hands she doesn’t have free before shuffling over to him; secretly, she’s grateful for the distraction from the tinny ring of her phone. “Grab that for me?”

“What?”

“My phone,” she explains, jutting her chin towards her apron pocket. “Can you?”

“Oh,” he says, immediately apprehensive. _Quickly, before it stops ringing_ , she thinks when his hands hesitate over her apron pocket. “I’ll just…”

“Jughead, it’s fine,” she tells him as his fingertips graze and hesitate over the edge of her pocket. “Just-”

His hand darts out quickly at the unintentional edge in her voice, as if grabbing for a dropped page in a flame, and even though she knows it’s coming, her breath still hitches at the feeling of his knuckles brushing against her hip bone. “It’s Archie,” he tells her, holding up the screen towards her.

“Oh.” Betty crouches slightly, turning her ear towards him. “Do you mind - thanks. Arch? What’s up?”

Across the line, Archie’s voice is almost painfully loud; he’s never quite mastered the art of not shouting on the phone. “Thanks for what?”

“Nothing, I wasn’t talking to you,” Betty tells him, cradling the phone against her shoulder as she hurries towards the waiting table. “What’s up?”

“The concrete’s screwed up.”

 _Archie_ , she mouths over at the Claytons as she delivers their plates, hopefully enough of an excuse for not stopping and chatting like she normally does.

“What happened?”

“Foundation’s flaking. I’m sorry, I can’t come by for the food right now.”

Betty makes her way back to her post at the countertop, raising her eyebrow in surprise when she finds his salad by and large gone.

“I’ll bring it.”

“Betty, you don’t have to. It’s lunch, I know you’re-”

“Archie, I’m bringing it. You just do you.”

Betty hangs up before Archie has a chance to protest any more, slipping her phone back into her apron pocket before poking her head back into the kitchen.

“Hey, Pop?” she calls, smiling at the way Pop grins over at her. She wonders how he does it - staying sunny all the time like that. It’s a nice quality to have. “Can I bring the food out to Archie?”

“Oh, sure, Betty,” Pop tells her, already shaking out two large paper bags, and when she strides over to help, he nudges her gently on the arm. “Should we throw in some brownies, too? Archie loves those.”

At that, Betty feels her heart swell. It’s a hard job working at Pop’s, one that she’d always found a little cool when she was younger, and that she now knows is far from it. But it’s never not wonderful to be working for the kindest man in town.

“Let’s do it,” Betty says, smiling.

 

* * *

 

“Trouble?” Jughead asks when she emerges from the kitchen, paper bags in hand.

Betty sighs, more so for Archie and the problem she wishes he didn’t have to deal with right now than herself. “The foundation’s flaking,” she explains. “I’m taking the food out to the site.”

Jughead matches her sigh with one of his own. “Archie thought the concrete looked a little watery. Did he say what he’s going to do?”

“He could patch it with foam and mortar, but I know him - he’ll want to repour it.”

“The whole thing?”

“Or whatever of it is flaking; he goes nuts about getting the foundation right. Up for a ride?”

For how spontaneous her question had been, Jughead does an impressive job of answering smoothly. “With you, in the car of death?” he asks, taking one of the bags from her. “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

Archie’s stress is written right into his shoulders, exposed for all to see as usual.

She’s joked once or twice that Archie likes his job as much as he does precisely because he can spend so much of it with his shirt off, but there’s more than a part of her that thinks there’s at least some truth to that.

“He doesn’t look happy,” Jughead comments as he pushes the car door open before stepping out.

“No,” Betty sighs, waving at Archie before calling over to him. “He’s never handled stress all that well.”

“Really? That’s surprising.”

“Is it?”

Jughead shrugs, dropping his voice low when Archie starts slowly jogging towards them. “I figured he would’ve gotten that from you. You seem to do just fine under pressure.”

“Hey,” Archie greets, slightly out of breath, and she thinks that if Archie is at all surprised to see Jughead there with her, he does a fine enough job at masking it.

“Pop threw in a few brownies for you guys,” Betty tells him, passing off the bags.

“Thanks, Betty. Just put it on my tab.”

She looks around the site then, frowning at the square of concrete that’s at least three shades lighter than the rest. It’s not a huge slab, a couple days’ worth of work at most, but she also knows how any delay weighs on Archie.

He doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t smile until everything is back on track.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” she hears herself saying. “You could do it in a day if everyone’s working at it.”

“Good thing everyone’s here,” Archie says, and she can tell plainly from his tone that they’re not.

“Hey,” she says, tapping the back of her hand against Archie’s arm, cringing at the sheen of sweat she finds there, “what’s up with Veronica?”

At that, Archie’s brow furrows, the lines on his forehead setting in furiously. “Nothing, why?

“I haven’t heard from her in two days. She hasn’t responded to anything.”

“Oh. She’s probably busy, then.”

“You don’t know?” Next to her, she thinks she catches Jughead flinch.

“I don’t keep a tracking device on her, Betty.”

“Did I say that you did? I just wanted to know if you knew where your _wife_ was.”

“Betty, I’m up to goddamn _here_ with problems. Half the guys are out, and I don’t have time right now to keep tabs on every little thing that _my wife_ is-”

“Why are you yelling at me? I’m just asking!”

“I’m not yelling!”

“Listen to yourself!”

And just like that, maybe from the sound of her own raised voice, maybe from the eyes she can feel so heavily falling on them from all angles, the fight falls away from Archie’s face. “I’m sorry,” he says voice calling quiet. “I didn’t mean - I’m sorry. I just - we’re behind already, and I’m stressed and-”

“I’ll help,” Jughead interjects, clapping a hand down on Archie’s shoulder for emphasis. “Just tell me what I can do; I can stay. I can help.”

When she sees the instant wash of relief over Archie’s face, she feels guilty for having pushed him at all. “Yeah?” Archie asks.

Jughead shrugs. “I’m not doing much today.” When his fingers begin working at his buttons, revealing a simple white, sleeveless shirt underneath, she quickly looks at the sky and only returns her gaze earthward when he’s tying his flannel around his waist.

She’s more than grateful that he stops there. She’s no stranger to men’s torsos - Archie has conditioned her to them long ago - but she knows that no matter how many times she’s seen her best friend whip his shirt off and balance a beer on his own abs, her face will still turn as red as Archie’s hair if Jughead even thinks about following suit now.

Betty inhales deeply then. She knows what she has to do, but it’s never easy apologizing to Archie, no matter how many times she’s done it in the past, no matter how well she knows him.

“Arch, I’m sorry,” she starts, letting the hands she hadn’t even realized she planted on her hips fall to her sides. “I know you’re stressed and I’m sorry.”

“Betty, it’s fine.”

“I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Betty.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“You know what, why don’t we do dinner at Pop’s tonight instead?”

At that, the lines on Archie’s forehead return again. “But it’s Thursday.”

“I know, but you’re busy and Veronica is… also busy,” she says, nose scrunching slightly at the landmine she’d just nearly fallen right back into. “You guys don’t have to cook this way.”

“I bought chicken skewers. It’s not a big deal.”

“Throw them in the freezer for next week, then. Let’s do Pop’s.”

There’s a beat before Archie answers, and voice slow and unsure when he does. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Betty says, throwing in a vigorous nod for emphasis. “We haven’t done Pop’s together in a while anyhow.”

“Okay,” Archie says, sucking in a deep breath. “Okay. But only if you’re cool with that.”

There are times, she thinks, that she doesn’t deserve Archie’s friendship. These dinners are for her - she knows that, and so does the rest of Riverdale, and that he still takes them as seriously as he does even after all this time has her fighting the urge to hug him, sweat and all.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling. “I’m cool.”

 

* * *

 

Betty balks when she sees Jughead jogging to catch up with her as she makes her way back to her car.

“I thought you were staying?” she asks.

“I am. But my bag’s with you.”

“Right,” Betty mumbles, gaze swinging from her car and him. “I… yeah, of course - your bag. I can take it back for you if you want.”

“Oh,” Jughead says, turning his hands into his pockets. “Really?”

“I mean, I definitely don’t have to if you’d rather not,” she covers quickly. “I know your computer’s in there, and I’ll keep it safe, but I wouldn’t want to assume that-”

“No, it’s not that,” he corrects gently. “I trust you with it, I just… I didn’t want to put you out.”

“Jughead, it’s no trouble,” she tells him, lip twitching up in amusement as she bumps his arm gently with her elbow. “I happen to be going that way.”

“You’re sure?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You can drop it at the motel if you want,” Jughead says quickly. “I think Mr. Muggs is there. Or you know, whatever’s easiest.”

She’d thought about asking Archie to ask him later, or maybe if she’d worked up enough courage between now and then, she might do it herself; maybe she’d call him or maybe she’d text him.

But now, she thinks, is as good a time as any.

“Or I can just bring it to dinner,” Betty says.

She doesn’t know if she’s looking for it or if it’s really there, or some odd combination of both, but she thinks there just might be a careful smile budding at his lips. “Dinner?” he repeats back, voice ticking up slightly in hopeful question.

Betty tilts her head over in Archie’s direction, carefully controlling her own smile as she does. “Pop’s tonight, remember?”

 

* * *

 

Tucked away in the back booth with four full water cups, she realizes just how long it’s been since she’s sat at Pop’s as Betty, the customer, and not Betty, the waitress, passing time between her shifts.

 _It’s different_ , Betty thinks, _sitting here without a starched collar around her neck_. In her mind, she knows it isn’t - this is the exact same booth she’d sat in the night before with Jughead across from her, the same bench she’d found herself falling asleep against to the gentle click of his keyboard.

But still - waiting here for Archie and Veronica, for him, wearing a dress that she wants to and not because she has to, all feels different.

Even if they only are at Pop’s.

“Hey.”

Betty double-takes as he slides into the seat next to her, the fabric of his shirt brushing up against her bare skin as he does. She’s sat across from him enough times now to not be thrown by the idea of it, but him right there next to her, wafting over all the signature smells of simply him as he reaches for his water, falls into that magical category of things that are different, too.

“You look nice,” he says, and she thinks that he looks as shocked by his own words as she is by the observation.

“Thanks,” Betty says softly, smoothing her dress down around her legs. “I’ve had it for years. Hey, how’s the foundation doing?” she asks, patting the back of her hand against his arm.

“My ears are still ringing.”

“Jackhammer?”

“Louder than gunfire, I swear.”

She very nearly and callously asks him how he could possibly know a thing like that, but it dawns on her quickly there’s at least one point of comparison in his history that he can draw from.

“We got most of it out,” he continues, moving past the moment swiftly. “Archie could probably repour tomorrow if he wanted.”

“Good,” Betty says, watching the ripples of her exhale in her water before sipping healthily. “That’s really good.”

“By the way, Veronica called him when we were leaving.”

“Oh?”

Jughead nods, sipping healthily from his own water and swallowing loudly. “I didn’t want to get involved, but it was uh… heated.”

“Really? Why?”

He shrugs, tapping his fingers on the plastic cup, almost in agitation. “I don’t know - I didn’t hear much, but I think she’s been in Centerville. All I meant is that I wouldn’t bring it up. Archie wasn’t exactly pleased.”

“Oh,” Betty says slowly. “Well, did Veronica say anything about why she’s been in Centerville?” Betty continues. “I mean, there has to be a reason.”

He sips again from his water. “I don’t know,” he answers diplomatically, but, she thinks, with the slightest of edges. “I really wasn’t trying to get involved.”

“Right, but did you hear anything? I’m not saying that you were trying to, but you might have.”

“Betty, really. I didn’t-”

“We’re here!”

Betty jumps at Veronica’s voice behind her, shrill and loud as ever. The quick tap of her heels joins its echo, then in a flurry of wool and silk, Veronica is sliding into the open bench, her presence sucking up the quiet that had settled before.

“Hey,” Archie says, voice drawn out and tired as he reaches over to squeeze her shoulder before half-sitting, half-collapsing next to Veronica. It’s enough to draw up a smile on her face; in this at least, she thinks, Archie’s just like her - his sweetness turned up in volumes after their fights. “Sorry we’re late.”

“You’re fine,” she says brightly, pushing their water cups in front of them. “Not late at all.”

“We would’ve been earlier but Ronnie was-”

“Archie,” Betty interrupts forcefully. “I said it’s fine.”

There’s something dark and maybe even a little insidious that crosses Veronica’s darkly painted eyes before she masks it over with the look of confidence Betty has always known her to wear.

“It’s my fault,” Veronica says breezily. “I was in Centerville today. I got back late.”

“Oh!” Betty says slowly. She doesn’t know how she feels about the idea of Jughead of all people telling her what and what not to bring up with Archie and Veronica, but she’d rather not get into it twice with Archie in one day, and when he’s so tired no less. “That’s… fun.”

“It was,” Veronica responds, seamlessly moving past her awkwardly stuttered words. “You should come along sometime, B.”

“That sounds ni-”

“And do what?” Archie’s answer is loud enough that it draws up even Jughead’s eyes from whatever he’s finding so interesting about his fork.

Betty feels waves of both hot and cold wash over her from either end of her body when Veronica turns to Archie, eyebrows raised and plum lips pursed together tightly. “Excuse me?”

“What’ve you even been doing in Centerville, anyway? It’s not like you’ve been telling me.”

“Oh, you know,” Veronica says, brushing away the heavy edge of Archie’s question with a quick wave of her hand, but with one of the hardest stares Betty’s seen on her to date, “just this and that.”

“I actually don’t know what _‘just this and that’_ is.”

“Archie,” Betty says, voice low but sharp.

“What? Do you know?”

 _“No,”_ Betty bites out. “So why don’t we just drop-”

“I’ve been looking at shop windows,” Veronica interrupts loudly, face turning a shade darker than the blush over her cheekbones. “I’ve just… I’ve been looking at the windows.”

“You’ve been… shopping?” Archie asks, and with such disbelief that she wonders if he’d been wondering if Veronica had been doing something far more insidious over there.

“Not _shopping_ ,” Veronica counters, a hard, mocking mimic folding around the word-in-common. “Just _looking_.”

_“Why?”_

“Do I need to tell you everything I do?”

“Is that what I said?”

“You didn’t need to say it to _imply-_ ”

“Guys,” Betty tries again, jerking her wrist under the table frantically and forcefully as she beckons someone over - Sandy, she notes when the woman approaches. She hasn’t shared that many shifts with her, but she’s nice enough. “Why don’t we just order?”

Betty watches as both Archie and Veronica emerge suddenly from the darkened, angry vortex of themselves, faces morphing almost instantly from twin storms to the bright versions of them she knows so well.

“Yeah. That’s - yeah. I’m starving. Burger, please,” Archie says, face growing redder by entire shades as he looks up to the waitress.

 

* * *

 

She tells him it’s not necessary, but he ends up walking her home after dinner. She tries not to look too hard past the perfectly reasonable explanation that he’s given her - he could use a walk after the burger he’d just inhaled, he wouldn’t mind some fresh air - but, she thinks, it’s hard not to look for.

“I feel like I’m always apologizing to you after these,” Betty begins when Archie’s truck fades from her view, “but I’m sorry for… whatever that was.”

At that, Jughead turns to her, surprised enough that his shoe catches on a raised piece of pavement. “And what was that, exactly?”

“Archie and Veronica? I don’t know what’s up with either of them lately.”

He looks almost amused, she thinks, as he looks back at her. “You’re apologizing for the fact that Archie and Veronica were fighting?”

Betty shrugs in an effort to tamper down the blush she feels rising at his words - when said like that, she thinks, it doesn’t sound like something she should be apologizing for.

“Well, I guess not,” she clarifies slowly. “It’s not like I can control what they do.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t bother me,” he says.

“Oh?”

“I don’t mean that as callously as it sounds. Do I feel for the guy who just had a fight with his wife in public? Sure. But that’s their business; it’s not mine to get involved in.”

“Oh,” she says again, voice turning small. “Well, good - I’m glad it didn’t bother you.”

He angles himself towards her, eyes glazed over in curiosity. “Did it bother you?”

She feels her lip inadvertently twisting under her front teeth as she considers his question. There’s the untruthful answer - the one that sounds a little something like his.

Or, there’s how she really feels.

“A little,” she responds.

“Why?”

“I don’t like seeing them like that.”

“Were love always peaches and cream,” he muses lightly.

“I know,” Betty says quickly. “I know it isn’t; it’d be naive of me to assume that it is. I just - I’ve never seen them fight before. I’m sure they have, and plenty, probably, but it’s not like they’ve ever done it in front of me. It just - threw me a little, I guess.”

The curiousness rounding his eyes softens as he nods in understanding. “I’m sure they’ll be just fine by tomorrow.”

“That’s optimistic, coming from you.”

He looks at her with surprise, almost like he hadn’t realized just how sunny an outlook he’d adopted. “It’s been known to happen,” he says eventually.

“Love’s not as hopeless as you once thought?” Betty ventures, with a boldness she shocks herself with.

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “But I’m not going to actively sit here and root against them. I like Archie; Veronica’s prickly and not exactly my type, but he loves her. She loves him. I hope they work out whatever that was back there.”

It’s a slightly different tune than the lament on love he’d been singing a few weeks ago down at the old field, and just as fleetingly as the Daisy petals he’d thrown out into the wind flew, she finds herself wondering if not Veronica, then who exactly _is_ his type.

Someone more like her?

“I hope so, too,” Betty says.

He seems content leaving it at that, and so she breathes in the air instead, feeling the hum of the night vibrate through her as she does. She’d thought she’d smelled the promise of rain when she’d left for Pop’s earlier - there’d been a heavier, denser wind rustling through the mowed grass with just a spray of dew twisted in - and she’d thought she’d be walking home in the downpour.

But it’s gone now, that smell, and now all that’s left is summer night.

 _Tomorrow_ , Betty supposes. In Riverdale, the rain never waits long before crashing onto the scene.

When they turn the corner on Elm, a turn his feet seem to know to make without hers guiding him there, he nods in the direction of her parents’ house.

“No envelope today?” Jughead asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“You had an envelope for them last time we, uh,” he says, trailing off as he gestures to the road in front of them instead.

“Oh!” Betty says, feeling her eyes widen with understanding. _The last time he walked her home,_ she fills in. “No, no envelope today - I normally give it to them the first week of the month.”

“A report on how many hours you’ve worked?” he guesses. “A long list of A+’s from Pop?”

“Kind of,” she says. “It’s money.”

And oddly, she doesn’t feel embarrassed when she admits that to him; she doesn’t feel the need to stare straight down at the cracks in the sidewalk and her cheeks don’t flush over with heat like she’d expected they would. They had before, while they were passing this very same oak tree even, and just a few weeks ago, but they don’t now.

“Of the infamous money troubles?” he muses.

“Those would be them,” she agrees, nodding. “My parents bailed me out of them, and I’m so grateful that they did. But it’s not right of me to not fix that. I just - as a person, I can’t let them do that for me. They’ve done enough - they raised me, they took care of me. They were there when I needed them, whether I wanted them to be or not.” She inhales deeply then in an effort to build up both time and courage. “I don’t always see eye-to-eye with them,” Betty continues. “Especially my mother. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good parents - they are. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that they’d done this for me too, and that I was doing nothing in return. That’s not who I am.”

Jughead is quiet when she looks over to him, and for a moment, there’s nothing more than the cool whistle of the night clinging to the air. “No,” he says after a beat, and she’s stilled for a moment when she hears just how earnest he’d sounded in that one syllable, “it’s not.”

Betty lets herself grasp onto and hold those words then. They’re simple ones, and echoes of her own but they’re meaningful. It’s one thing to see herself a certain way and to want to be a certain person.

But it’s an entirely different sentiment and feeling altogether coming from him. In a way, it means more - it’s him, someone completely separate and outside of who she is as a person, telling her who she thinks she presents to the world really is exactly that.

And it’s a lovely thing to know.

It’s a lovely thing to know from him.

When her phone buzzes, vibrating against her leg through her purse, it’s unexpected enough that she involuntarily jumps at the noise.

In another life, she thinks she’d probably be turning red right about now at the reality of her nearly falling sideways into the Klumps’ hydrangea bushes.

But she’s been waiting for this call all day, and that it’s now here is enough to push any embarrassment away.

“Would you mind?” Betty asks, hands fumbling on the clasp of her crossover as she digs for her phone.

He looks at her, amused, she thinks, that she’d even ask. “Not at all.”

“I normally wouldn’t do this, I’m just waiting on-”

“Betty,” Jughead interrupts, gently pushing the phone in her hand closer to her, “it’s okay.”

Betty sucks in a breath as she swipes a shaky thumb over her screen, holding back a smile at the way he tips forward slightly in anticipation as she brings her phone to her ear.

“Cheryl,” she greets, drawing her head back as she pulls her spine straight.

Against her shoulders, her ponytail bobs from side to side.

 

* * *

 

“Mother isn’t for it,” Cheryl tells her flatly.

Betty can’t help the dejection that underpins her voice. “Oh. Okay. That’s… oh.”

“But,” Cheryl continues brightly as though she hadn’t just borne bad news in four succinct words. “I meant what I said, sister dearest."

"We’re not sisters-in-”

“I own half the shares of the _Register_ ,” Cheryl interrupts loudly, brushing right past her comment.

Betty feels her brow draw together in confusion. “No you don’t.”

“Haven’t you heard? I do now. Christmas present from Clifford last year - he never knows what to give me. Newspaper shares are his idea of a good gift. Fortunately, they are for me, too.”

She doesn’t know exactly when Cheryl had started calling her father by his first name instead of _‘Daddy’_ like she always had - maybe around the time Veronica had breezed into town referring to her own father with the word up and down little Riverdale - but now, it’s always Clifford.

That would never fly with her own father - she can’t even imagine trying get the words _‘hey, Hal,’_  out of her mouth - but Cheryl’s always dared to be a little different.

“Oh,” Betty answers, feeling her stomach lurch at the thought of Cheryl of all people holding that much stock in the newspaper that’d once belonged to her family. “I didn’t know.”

“And now you do. Anyhow, as much as I don’t like saying these words to anyone, I think you’re right. The _Register_ needs something new. So the column is yours if you want it. But, at thirty cents per word.”

“I said fifty.”

“If readership goes up, we’ll discuss then.”

Betty taps her finger against the back of her phone, thinking; it’s not like she has that much of a leg to stand on or that great a hand to barter with.

But still - “forty cents.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Forty, Cheryl.”

“Fine.” She can almost see Cheryl’s red-lipped smile across the line. It’s one that’s always put her slightly on edge; a little calculating, and always betraying victoriousness, even if she had just been the one to come out on top. “I’m spending tomorrow with my darlings, but come to the _Register_ later. And find the standard form contract while you’re at it, I have no idea where Mumsie puts these things. The files are a mess.”

“I can’t then. It’s Friday-”

“-evening,” Cheryl finishes for her, the hard tone in her voice turning soft in understanding. “Of course. Saturday, then - at nine; I’m leaving in the afternoon. And bring coffee, Betty. It’s really the least you could do.”

There’s a curt click over the line before she even has a chance to tell Cheryl to send her love to the twins or to get her own coffee because it’s not like she owes her anything, but right now, she doesn’t mind. Betty tucks her phone back into her bag, taking care to slide it into the little pocket it fits so well into before giving her ponytail a cursory tug, bringing it up higher on her head.

And only then does she allow herself to look over at him.

“It’d be cruel if you left me hanging,” Jughead says when she does, mouth tugging up in a careful smile.

Betty moves before she even registers her own motions in her mind, crossing the distance between them with one long leap, squealing loudly as she circles her arms around his neck. She feels him sway and step back slightly from the flying force of her momentum, but he’s unsteady for less than a heartbeat; almost seamlessly and instinctively, his arm anchors around her lower back as he hugs her back, too.

His fingertips, slightly cold to the touch, press against the sliver of bare skin that’s exposed when her shirt rides up her from her movement.

“Sorry,” Betty says, pulling away and letting her arm fall to her side when it hits her that she’s just more or less launched herself into him. “I’m sorry, I was just - excited.”

She doesn’t know, but she thinks that his arm around her might just linger there a moment longer than she’d expected it to.

“I can tell,” he says easily.

“That was Cheryl,” Betty explains.

“Who’s not your sister-in-law.”

“Right,” Betty answers, tipping her head back towards the road. “She’s Jason’s sister, so she’s Polly’s, not mine, but she - anyway, unimportant. You get it. Her family bought the paper from mine.”

“I remember,” Jughead says quietly.

“I went to see her today.”

When Jughead’s eyes widen as he quickly pulls his hands out of his pockets only to do nothing at all with them, Betty thinks about hugging him again.

“Yeah?”

Betty nods, clearing her throat as she works up to her voice. She wants it to be clear when she says this; strong and sure.

With her arms held out at her sides in presentation of herself and her voice sounding exactly like she’d hoped it would, she tells him.

“Meet the _Register’s_ new columnist.”

This time, he hugs her first.

 

* * *

 

“A column,” Jughead says slowly once they’re started back down the road, his wide smile betraying his approval, and an entirely new expression that she thinks just might be pride. “How’d you swing it, Nellie Bly?”

She smiles at the moniker. “I went to see Cheryl this morning,” Betty explains, “shared a few choice words with her about how no one’s reading the paper anymore and how the entire town is bored of seeing the same old maple syrup ad every week.”

“And you waited this long to tell me?” he chides teasingly.

Betty shrugs. “I didn’t want to jinx it.”

“Fair enough,” he concedes. “Why now?”

“I hate seeing the _Register_ like this,” she says, surprised by the strength of her own words. She hadn’t known how truly she felt and believed them until she’d said them out loud. “It wasn’t about to win any Pulitzers back when we ran it, but people read it. It’d be there right next to the ketchup bottles at Pop’s. It wouldn’t sit out on front porches for days. The paper had heart then. I just - I don’t know-”

“Wanted to breathe some life back into it?”

“Yeah,” she says, turning to him. “Exactly. You get it.”

He nudges her then, gently grazing his elbow against her arm. “Did you tell your dad you were doing the dance macabre with the Blossoms?”

It’s a grim and sinister outlook, but it’s also one that’s in no way wrong. In her father’s eyes, it’ll be exactly that - a dance of betrayal and a dance of death. “No,” Betty admits. “Not yet. I’ll have to, though.”

“Well, if that misery wants company, I’m happy to play second in command.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m an advocate for the written word.”

 _“That’s_ how you want to meet my dad?” Betty hears herself asking, voice light. “Standing in my parents’ monstrously white kitchen while he turns red when he finds out I’m going to be working for the big bad Blossoms?”

When the apples of his cheeks start turning colors, Betty wishes back her words. She wishes she didn’t have this tendency sometimes - the one to be just a little sassy and a little snarky, and without thinking, too.

“So, uh,” he says, coughing loudly. “What’s the column about?”

If he’s willing to brush past it, then she’s more than happy to as well. “I have an idea,” Betty admits slowly. “I haven’t fully fleshed it out yet. Any suggestions?”

“Hey, this is your baby, not mine.” It’s only after he continues that she muses on how once and not long ago either, she would’ve flinched at the phrase. “But word of advice, not that you need it? Write what you know. You said the paper lacks heart.”

“Would you agree?”

Jughead looks over at her then, slowing slightly as he considers her question. “I think the paper lacks more than just heart,” he says eventually.

“It really didn’t use to be like that,” Betty defends. It isn’t her paper anymore, or her family’s either, but she doesn’t think there will be a time when she ever won’t put up her dukes for it.

He’s sympathetic when he looks over to her, eyes softened in kindness even at the strength of her tone. “Heart comes from passion,” he says, voice turning quiet in what she thinks might be shyness. “And more often than not, you’re passionate about what you know.”

“Like you and mysteries, huh?”

“Sure,” he says easily.

“Heart comes from passion,” Betty repeats, testing out the words in her mouth, mulling over them as she does.

“Or at least I think it does.”

At the small section of sidewalk leading up to her house, his footsteps beside hers slow, falling from a slow mosey to a meandering shuffle.

Betty thinks about inviting him in then - it feels like the right thing to do, and it’d certainly be the polite thing, too, given that he’s gone out of his way to walk her home.

But there’s a part of her that just doesn’t feel ready for him to walk right into her house yet - the place where she sleeps, where she eats cheese on the couch in her sweatpants for breakfast on choice days; where she lives out her days of sunshine and shadow.

As it is, he looks perfectly content hanging back a few paces from her as she unlatches her gate, and Betty figures that he doesn’t mind saying their goodbyes here, either.

“We should celebrate,” he says, leaning up against the side of her fence, a little loudly, almost like he hadn’t intended his own words.

 _And that,_ she thinks, _is curiously endearing._ She’d stuck her own foot in her mouth earlier with the all-too familiar dad comment, and it’s a nice thing he just might have that tendency, too. “Oh?” Betty presses, feeling the corners of her mouth tug upward as she does.

She thinks he might not run with it, but he does after a beat. “It’s not everyday the town’s sweetheart gets her own column. And in the newspaper her family used to own, no less.”

She laughs lowly at the oddness of it all; it isn’t without its quirks, this strange little town called Riverdale, and she supposes that for better or worse, her column in the Blossom-owned _Register_ qualifies.

“Telling my parents about this isn’t my idea of a fun time, if that’s what you had in mind.”

Jughead shakes his head, shoulders shaking slightly with quiet laughter as the curl that’s never quite tucked into his hat brushes across his eyelid. “I’ve never caught fireflies before.”

Betty is confused for a moment, narrowing her eyes as she tries to figure out why that of all things is what he’d come up with.

Then, she remembers it, that fleeting, passing comment she’d made weeks ago, one that she hadn’t paid a whit of attention to at the time.

But that apparently, he had.

“You want to catch fireflies with me?” she hears herself blurting out, in a tone of voice she can only describe as truly dumb-sounding.

He raises his eyebrows at her, in a way that makes her think that the latter at the very least should’ve been obvious to her. And it was - she’d just wanted to make sure.

“I hear it’s not really a solo activity,” he says eventually, almost shyly.

Betty laughs, softly enough that she shares the sound with only him. “Mmm.”

He tips his head at her, a wordless response to her neither here-nor-there answer.

“Okay,” she agrees eventually, smiling; she never had any intention of responding with anything else.

“Tomorrow? We could go after-”

“No,” she interrupts firmly. “I’m not free on Fridays.”

He looks taken aback by the suddenness of her outburst, and she wishes she’d answered with a little less curtness rounding her voice. “Oh,” Jughead responds, “sorry, I just - I’ve never seen you at Pop’s on Friday nights.”

“Saturday,” Betty offers instead. “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, anyhow.”

For a minute, she thinks he might press her on that, but he doesn’t. “Okay,” he agrees. “Saturday. At night, right? That’s when you see them?”

It might be the most endearing thing he’s said all night. “At night, Jughead.”

She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen him smile quite like that before. Once, maybe, when he’d dragged himself into Pop’s after he’d spent the day at the site pouring concrete with Archie and she’d set a burger in front of him, but this smile just might top it.

 _It’s brighter,_ she thinks. _And more brilliant._

“Okay,” he says again slowly, and she has a feeling it might be more so for himself than her. “It’s a-”

He pauses then, voice catching and trailing off over the remainder of his sentence, really just the one word.

But she knows what word he’s stuck on; he doesn’t need to say it out loud for her to have heard it. It’s the one that carries so much value and importance beyond the four simple letters themselves; the word that brings along with it feeling and emotion, possibility and promise.

It’s a gargantuan meaning for such a small, little word, and she doesn’t hold it against him that it catches him off guard, because it’s doing the same thing to her, too.

Over the periwinkles his hand lazily grazes against, Betty brushes her palm over the delicate petals, feeling the familiar, silken tickle against her skin. As her hand nears his, she extends her own out a heartbeat further than she really should or needs to, feeling her fingers stretch with the motion.

 _He’d reached out,_ she thinks, _he’d put himself out there._

She can, too.

And for a moment, one that she thinks the entire world might just have stopped in wait for, Betty allows her hand to come to rest over his.

 

* * *

 

At her dining table on Friday evening, with a mug cradled in the circle of her threaded fingers and the uniform she’d thrown in the hamper still wafting over the faint smell of burgers, Betty looks to the clock on the wall.

It’s nearly eight - three minutes ‘til - but she can’t leave the house until then.

So she runs down the list of things she has to do as she waits.

Laundry, and a lot of it, too.

Vacuuming, which she hadn’t factored in as a necessity for tomorrow, but her dinky air conditioner has a habit of blowing around more dust than she thinks it does.

Her shift - the breakfast buzz into lunch crunch that’ll leave her not wanting to do any of the above - and then, there’s the event that she’s simply named fireflies.

At least that one she’s looking forward to.

When the clock comes around on the hour, Betty rises from her seat slowly and swirls a round of clean water in her mug before setting it into the sink.

It’s raining, she notices as she steps outside - not much, but enough that it’s noticeable; enough that she can feel it slowly gathering and hiding within the strands of her ponytail.

She begins the walk she wishes she didn’t have to know so well, breathing in the sharp air pushing harshly against her as she wades through the night. It fills her as she does, that earthly, dewy scent of wet hitting dry, of heaven above hitting the ground - _petrichor_ , she’s learned long ago - the word for this exact smell.

It’s a beautiful sounding word, Betty thinks. But for this hour, there is no beauty in her world.

There’s just this road, and what waits for her at the end of it.

  

* * *

 

Riverdale is a small town; even in her youth, when she’d been no taller than the fence she’d shimmy and climb through as she looked to the rolling greens that stretched on beyond her, the skies that ran parallel to it, all so vast and so never-ending, she’d known she’d been nestled away in a small town, held within the palms of a big world.

Riverdale is a loyal town, too; few end up leaving, and those that do find their way back. There’s Archie, who’d tried to leave and who’d been called home, Kevin, who had only gotten as far as Centerville and only for his day-job, and her sister and Jason who cross the river back to a world without crystals often enough.

And then there’s her, who’s never left.

So it’s inevitable, Betty thinks, that every family in this town each has their own little stake in this little round of gated land - their own that they’ve lost, their own that they lay flowers down for, bow their heads and shed tears for, their own that they pay their respects to.

She reads the names to herself as she slinks past them - Mantle, McCoy, Andrews - the loud and fiesty old man who she’s been told that she’d met as a toddler but that for the life of her, can’t remember a thing about, save for the fact that he’d had even deeper-set forehead lines than Fred Andrews that she’d once tried to run her chubby fingers through.

Great-grandaddy Cooper.

She’d never met him.

Then, there’s her own stake in this barren, desolate land so lost of any life or anything betraying vitality - her own little round of granite stone, smaller than the rest, and dotted now with pelts of falling rain tuning it shades darker; a match for the roaring skies above.

Betty breathes in deeply, feeling her breath enter her body in labored stutters as she stands in front of the stone marking the once-lived-life that calls her back every week, hearing the whispers of people so loved and so long gone that tether every family, that tether and tie her to this macabre place.

“Hi,” she whispers, slowly sinking to her knees as she reaches out her hand over the carved letters. The wet earth soaks through her jeans. “I missed you this week.”

  

* * *

 

It always takes her a while to work up her courage. She does this every week, but it never gets any easier. It’s tangible out here when she’s staring at this piece of stupid rock in a way that it isn’t when she’s going about her day-to-day. There isn’t that much time to think about it then - there are orders and books and trivial facts to fill her mind with instead.

But here, there’s just this.

This little piece of rock she doesn’t even remember picking out in the blur of everything else.

Betty clears her throat in an effort to break free from the invisible hand clutching at it, blurring her vision and changing the sound of her own voice.

“It’s been a good week,” Betty begins. “The weather’s been good; it’s raining right now, but it’s been nice other than that. Wednesday was pretty warm. Nothing too eventful happened,” she says. “Although - Archie and Veronica fought. In Pop’s. In public. I don’t know what’s going on with Veronica - she’s been disappearing to Centerville, and she hasn’t been telling me why, either.”

Betty pauses, sucking in a deep breath. When she’s out here, she tries to keep her voice high and bright. It’s a war, she thinks, one between her voice, and her head and her sad, broken little heart, but it’s one she just has to keep on fighting.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Betty continues, turning her voice up as brightly as she’s able to. “I got a column in the _Register_. Do you remember how you used to sit with me there?” she asks. “Right up on the big table. It’s still there - Cheryl didn’t get rid of it. It was hard being in there,” Betty admits; if she can’t be honest with the dead, then who else can she be honest with? “But nice, too. I don’t know if it’s okay to think that. But you loved that place, and I did, too. You learned how to-”

“Betty.”

She’s on her feet and standing in between the gravestone and the owner of the rain-muffled voice before she even makes out who it is through the sheen of falling rain.

Jughead, with an umbrella bearing the Pop’s logo on it.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and even she can hear the bite cupped around her voice. This is her day, and this is her time here. She gives so much of it to everyone else, but this time here is hers and hers alone, and damn anyone who doesn’t understand that. “I told you I’m not free on Fridays.”

“I know,” Jughead says, holding out his free hand towards her, almost as though to stop her runaway assumptions. “I know. I heard you. I just - I was at Pop’s and I saw you walking out here in this. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She scoffs at his words, letting her arms fall and slap to her sides loudly. “I’m in a cemetery.”

“I know,” he says again, the gentle timbre of his voice barely audible over the rumble of rain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just-”

Betty watches as his gaze moves past hers and to the words and dates carved on the wet granite.

He’ll figure it out.

She’s always known that he would at some point or other, and there’s a part of her that’s frankly surprised someone hasn’t whispered it into his ear already, all the while turning a pair of sad, pity-filled eyes her way, because it’s how everyone in this town looks at her now.

 _That poor Betty Cooper,_ she’d thought they’d all say - _that poor, sweet Betty Cooper, and her sad, tragic story. You’d best stay away from her, lest she swallow you up in all that sadness and bad luck of hers, too._

 _It’s been nice,_ she thinks, _having him just look at her like any other person and not someone mired in tragedy._

She supposes that will all change now.

“That photo at the garage isn’t of your brother,” he says, eyes meeting to hers with understanding.

At that, she almost smiles. She’d thought he’d figure it all out that day at the garage when he’d stood with his coffee in a paper Dixie cup, looking carefully at her father’s family photos. It’d seemed obvious to her, but she’d conceded later that maybe it was only obvious to her because she knows this tale, this story of her life all too well.

“No,” Betty whispers, looking back to the little grave marker behind her. The rain falls and catches on her bottom lip, turning and trailing its way into her mouth as she does. “It’s of my son.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asphodel means “my regrets follow you to the grave.”
> 
> Asphodel flowers are also said to live forever in the Elysian fields, which in Greek mythology, is where the souls of the heroic and virtuous go for their final rest. (h/t to @earthlaughsinflowers for the insightful information!)
> 
> The last scene obviously has some implications for how the rest of the story will unfold, and if I had to break down this story into acts, this would likely be the end of act I; we're still a ways to go. That being said, this is not a story about digging into Betty's sadness over what happened to her (or anyone, for that matter), but rather, one about the paths you take after you're faced with tragedy, and how you start again. The characters' grief is obviously part of that, but I did want to be clear that this isn't a story that's going to focus only on that.
> 
> One more thing - in chapter 6, Archie says that they’ve all made mistakes in the past. What Archie thinks Betty’s mistake is will be made clear in the next chapter, but it is absolutely not the fact she had a child.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> “Daisy Mae” - Leon Bridges  
> “Burning Love” - Elvis Presley  
> “Hungry Eyes” - Eric Carmen  
> “Storm Comin’” - The Wailin Jennys


	8. Lilac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my thanks to bugggghead for betaing this chapter so carefully and thoroughly!
> 
> Warning for this chapter - discussion of grief and death, mention of abortion.

 

_Find you a lover_

 

He walks her home.

Overhead, there’s the rhythmic, steady drum of rain against the umbrella, and the soft whistle of the sleeve of her rain jacket brushing against his own, but next to him, Betty is silent.

And he is, too. He doesn’t know what to say to her; nothing seems quite right. All his words of regret and sorrow are far too small for the moment, and all his thoughts of disbelief and affront that she’d felt the need to hide this from him feel too selfish for the here and now.

So he simply walks, stealing glances over at her when he can no longer stand staring straight ahead at the flurry of rain. But she’s never there - the crumbled, shattered woman he’s afraid he’ll see when he brings himself to look. Her head is held high, and her nose tips up slightly towards the angry skies, almost in a prideful way. Her steps are sure and firm.

He falters at the gate guarding her house, and follows her through it only after she’s stepped a few paces in front of him, turning back with a look of confusion when the rain pelts across her face.

“You can come in if you want,” she tells him at her front door as she turns her keys over in her wet, soil stained hands.

He does, but he also doesn’t think that’s the important question. In the matter of her home and hearth, the place where she lays her head down to rest, there’s only one question that is.

“Do you want me to?” he asks softly.

Over roaring crack of thunder, her voice is clear - steady like the rain, and sharp like the slice of lightning flashing across the sky.

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”

 

* * *

 

He remembers the night she’d sent a careful, discerning eye around the small space of his motel room, and the word she’d used that had thrown him for a loop - _it’s not as homey as I thought it’d be_ , she’d said.

In a theoretical sense, he understands the word - homey - it’s something that feels lived-in and loved, it’s those creature comforts, it’s warmth and familiarity. But now, he’s starting to understand it beyond the borders of its definition, as a concept and as an entity, too.

She’s in her room changing, and though there’s the smallest sliver of open door she’d probably forgotten to shut entirely - maybe because she’s used to not needing to, or maybe because she trusts him not to look - there’s more than enough out here to keep him occupied.

There’s a lot to learn about her in the things she keeps within these four walls.

It’s a small house. Everything to see - the kitchen, the few closed doors, one with a little chalkboard hanging over it, the living room and fireplace - he can see from his post by the front door. But rising above the violent shudder of wind and rain outside Betty’s four walls, is the constant undercurrent of warmth. Her house reminds him of orange and yellow, of piles of fallen rust colored leaves and knitted mittens, of lemonade and nights that fall in the in-between of temperate and cool.

 _Her home is warm,_ Jughead thinks as he tentatively steps into the house, balking a little at the squeaking floorboard under the third step he takes. There’s an unfolded blanket on her couch, maybe from where she’d taken a nap, and a book laying page-side down on the coffee table, marking her place. And then, there’s his favorite hidden wonder - the single, bunched up sock he sees tucked away in the small space between her end table and couch.

Jughead considers shifting the sock into view since it’s not particularly obvious now. But he also thinks she’s the kind of person that might grow flushed at the sight of that errant piece of clothing, so he turns to her fireplace mantle instead.

There’s a few candles there, all in floral scents, and a little coffee cup with a handful of little purple flowers, and a single framed photo in the middle of Betty, smiling in a way he’s never seen her smile before, and a boy with one front tooth missing and round glasses, smiling with her, too. He finds himself smiling at their pose - arms outstretched, like they’re flying, with Betty’s hands gently curving over her son’s.

 _They’re at that field_ , Jughead realizes as he looks to the background, and at that, he feels his heart clench, almost painfully. That reverence she’d cloaked around her at that place hadn’t escaped him even then, but it means so much more now - that she’d showed him, that she’d trusted him enough to take him there.

“Tea?” he hears Betty ask as she emerges from her room, hair thrown up in a neat ponytail and wet clothes swapped out for shorts and a t-shirt. “Or coffee?”

He doesn’t really feel like either, but he doesn’t want to be rude. “Whatever you’re having,” Jughead says.

“Tea it is.” Betty’s head darts under a floral drop-cloth next to the stove, and there’s the sharp sound of metal-on-metal before she rises, pot in hand. “Please,” she says, waving towards the couch, “go ahead and sit. You don’t have to just stand there. Make yourself at home.”

And because he doesn’t want to be the strange man just standing there and gawking in her house and at her things, he obliges.

“I like your house,” Jughead begins. “It’s - it’s very you.”

“Yeah? What about it is me?”

He expects there to be something gloomy in her voice, but he fails to find it. “It’s warm,” he hears himself saying as he looks around again, eyes pausing on the built-ins that flank her fireplace. “I like the books.”

“Mmm,” Betty hums, one of understanding and not necessarily of familiarity. “Thanks. I’ve been collecting them for… ever, really. Milk, sugar? Honey? It’s chamomile.”

“Oh,” Jughead says. “No, thanks. I’ve never seen you drink chamomile.”

He feels, plainly put, embarrassed after he’s ventured that observation. She’s still her in her house, and a familiar her, too - now she’s just standing guard over a pot of water instead of a coffee pot. But he’s learned things about her in the past hour that adds a very new layer to her, too, and it’s taking him a minute to put it all together.

“I don’t when I’m at Pop’s,” Betty explains. “It makes me sleepy.”

Jughead nods at her in thanks when she brings the mug over to him, one with a painted geometric design across the pale ceramic. Betty sits down next to him on the chesterfield, tucking one leg under her as she turns to him. There’s a rush of air that floats his way as she does, her sillage of rain and the outside, the tone of something floral, and the comforting thing that’s simply her.

“I figure I owe you an explanation,” she says quietly.

He shakes his head before running a hand over it and tugging off his beanie. It doesn’t feel right that he’s wearing it in this moment. “Betty, you don’t owe me anything.”

“But you’re curious.”

“I am.”

“Well,” Betty says, voice thoughtful as she wraps her fingers around the mug in her hands, embellished with a pretty flower print and a little yellow _‘B’_ near the rim, “ask away.”

 

* * *

 

He starts with something easy.

“His - your son’s - name. You named him after Archie.”

“I did,” Betty says, nodding once. “I’ve always felt bad about it. Archibald Harold - it’s such a big name for such a little person, you know? It’s an old name, too - it’s a grandpa name.”

No arguments there.

“Is Archie - the, uh-”

“The father?” Betty finishes. “No. I don’t know where the father is; he was in California, the last I heard. He wasn’t interested in being a part of my son’s life, and frankly, I wasn’t either. I, um, did stuff with him, obviously - I’m not the Virgin Mary, nor am I claiming to be. But I didn’t love him, and I wasn’t with him. I was just - I was eighteen, about to go off to college, and I’d never had sex before,” she explains. “I wanted to before I went, just so I could know what it was about. I wasn’t - _we_ weren’t - careful about it. I should’ve been, I know that - I’m so careful about everything in life. But it was prom, and I was young and inexperienced and trying to do something spontaneous for once in my life. But,” she finishes, voice careful and thoughtful, “I can’t even say I regret it.”

Because that would mean she regrets him, he reasons. And he can tell she so clearly doesn’t.

“I wanted my son to be good,” Betty continues. “So I named him after the best man I knew. Archie was there with me through as much of it as he could be. He came home on weekends to take me to doctor’s appointments - it took my parents a while to adjust to it all, and they weren’t exactly supportive in the beginning. Archie was - always. He’d go to Pop’s at two in the morning and sneak me cheese fries through my window; he read baby books with me. He asked me to marry him back then.”

Jughead feels his head cloud at that, and something unknown and unnamed rises in his throat. Hers is a story with roots and beginnings that go so much deeper than he’d ever imagined, and he knows he’s only at the beginning of it.

“You didn’t want to?” he asks.

Betty shakes her head. “No. I don’t want the person I marry to be doing me a favor. And I didn’t want that for Archie, either – he’s never been in love with me. I wanted him to find someone he really loved, too – someone he’d fall in love with. I wanted him to find Veronica. It’s the last time he asked me to marry him,” she muses with a light laugh.

“The last time?”

“He’s been asking me since we were four. I think Archie thought it was some kind of solution. But marriage shouldn’t be one - it’s hard enough as it is without the need to fix something at the outset.”

Jughead finds himself thinking then that his mother would probably like Betty if she ever met her. Or, at the very least, she’d appreciate her line of thinking on marriage.

“Archie used to call him Little Archie,” Betty says, an old, small smile on her lips. “He’ll be a good dad one day. Veronica isn’t ready yet, and I don’t think he is either, but one day - he’ll be great. I called him AJ - we all did, for Archie-”

“-Junior,” Jughead finishes.

“Right.”

Jughead breathes in, slowly and measuredly - he doesn’t want her thinking that he’s in any way judging her for this, especially when she’d sat there not all that long ago with a kind and patient ear for him.

“You didn’t think about...  you know, not going through with it?” he ventures.

“I did,” Betty says plainly, and he’s grateful she doesn’t look offended by his question. “I thought about it a lot, actually. I wanted to go to college. But at the end of the day, there was someone out there who wanted him, and I thought why not have something good come out of this? So I’d wait a year. I didn’t know that someone who’d want him would be me until I held him,” she says. “I knew then that there wasn’t anyone on this earth who was supposed to be his mom but me - no one would ever love him like I do.”

Jughead watches as she drums her fingers against her mug, eyes cast down to the bobbing tea bag. “I used to think that this was my punishment,” Betty mumbles, and so quietly he finds himself pitching forward in an effort to hear her. “I didn’t want AJ until I did, and so the world took him away from me early. I know it’s irrational, and I know that’s not the way these things work. It happened because it happened. But of all the mothers out there, the ones who’ve loved their children from the very minute they started growing, I was always behind the curve. I didn’t love him in those months. I didn’t want him, and I always thought this was my punishment for that.”

“You know it’s not, right?” he says, voice firm and emphatic.

He doesn’t know a lot, but this he knows like his own name.

“I know,” Betty agrees. “Still - the mind wanders. It muses. And on the darkest and gloomiest of days, sometimes that’s where it goes.”

“What-” Jughead asks, punctuating his sentence with a sip from his mug. He’s no stranger to chamomile. It never works in sending him off to the sandman, but there’s something calming about it, and he feels like he needs that right now. “What happened?”

“How did my son die?” Betty clarifies bluntly.

He wonders if he’s overstepped with that question. “We don’t have to talk about this if you-”

“No, really - it’s okay. It helps me to say the words sometimes. My son is dead and he has been for two years, three months, ten days and… four hours and seventeen minutes,” she says, tipping her head back towards the clock on the oven. “It just is what it is. He had leukemia - acute lymphocytic leukemia. It’s a real fucker of a disease.”

He doesn’t know that he’s ever heard her swear before, and he feels himself blinking rapidly when he hears the word fall from her lips.

“AJ was… he was life,” Betty says, smiling as her voice ticks up in fondness. “He’d get up with the sun - he was the energy I didn’t have after a long day. Which is how I knew something was wrong - he was tired all of a sudden, cold when he shouldn’t be.”

He knows how this story ends. He’s seen it.

But he doesn’t want it to end the way it does, because he doesn’t think it’s at all fair that the sunny little boy with glasses and who looks so much like Betty, flying in a field of wildflowers, should be cold and dead and buried, when there’s so much of his own life that he’s wasted doing truly terrible and stupid things.

“I - we - caught it early. I just knew something was wrong with him, and not in the slightly under the weather kind of way. I knew. And I thought - okay. It’ll be okay. He’s a child and children are resilient. And of all the diseases he could’ve gotten - did you know the five-year survival rate for ALL is eighty-five percent?”

“No,” Jughead says softly. Eighty-five percent, and still, the sunny boy had been the unlucky one. “I didn’t.”

“It was okay at first,” Betty continues, and a part of him wishes she wouldn’t, or that there’d be some way to give this story a different ending. “He responded well until he just… didn’t. I don’t know why. The doctors don’t know why. I yelled at them until I was blue in the face, and they still didn’t know why.”

He smiles, just a little, and only when she does. He can see it - he’s seen how fierce she can be, and he can see the lioness in her that would come out in a situation like this.

“That’s the how and why of the money problems,” she says. “Did you know that insurance only covers so much? You’d think that a policy would include everything and anything for children’s diseases because they’re just _children_ , you know? We should be doing everything to save them, not cherry picking what gets covered. We tried targeted stem cell therapies - insurance doesn’t cover that; clinical trials, second opinions, third opinions, experimental treatments - insurance doesn’t cover a lot of that, either. Not that it mattered. I would’ve paid anything for even just a chance for him to be better again.”

Betty pauses then, but he’s grateful for the break. He wonders how one human body can go through so much, especially the one in front of him that he’s seen toil and labor through shifts and with a wide smile on her face.

Surely, there must be some kind of reprieve.

“My parents are good people,” she says, after drawing in a long breath. “They weren’t always supportive. It was hard for them to see me like that, I think - for them to adjust their ideas of who they’d thought I’d be to who I became. Who I am. But they were there for me during those two years - they loved AJ. He’s their grandson, and they truly loved him - they never thought twice about selling the _Register_. Archie thought about selling Andrews Construction,” Betty says, and it’s the first time her voice turns anything close to mournful. “Veronica hired lawyers to try to break into her trust - she couldn’t touch it until twenty-six. I know she’s not your favorite, but Veronica’s a good person, too.”

“I believe you,” he says. He isn’t Veronica’s biggest fan at the present, given the way Archie is tearing out his red hair over her, but if someone like Betty sees good in her, then he knows it’s there.

“I wouldn’t have gotten through any of it without her,” Betty says. “I used to sleep out in the cemetery, rain or shine. I know it’s morbid, but it’s how I coped and it’s what I did. There was this hurricane one night - this real monster of a storm. Veronica stayed out there with me, shivering in the rain so I wouldn’t be alone. I stopped doing it after that - now we do Thursday night dinners instead. I couldn’t keep doing that to the people who I still had left.”

“Betty,” he starts, shaking his head as he sets his mug down on one of the mismatched coasters on the coffee table. “I just - I’m sorry. More than I can even say.”

There aren’t words enough for how sorry he is that her past has been filled with such pain. He might deserve his. But she doesn’t deserve hers.

“You know,” Betty says, drawing her gaze up to his. “There comes a point where you just have to step back. Or at least I think there is. AJ fought, and I’m so proud of him. He was brave and strong, and he never would’ve given up, and I could never be more proud of him. But he was tired, and all the money in the world couldn’t have saved him. It was never about him being ready to die, I think. He was ready,” Betty says, voice firm. “It was about me letting go.”

  

* * *

 

It takes him a moment to build to his voice again, and in that moment, he finds himself focusing on him looking at her. He supposes he should stop looking for it, because he doesn’t think he’ll find it, but there’s no indication of her nearing her breaking point. She’s not crying, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to; rather, her shoulders are held straight, and her head level.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jughead asks quietly. “Did you think I would’ve judged you? I wouldn’t have - I don’t.”

“I know,” Betty says, and the determination in her voice tells him that she really means it. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d stop looking at me that way.”

His heart catches and thuds to a stop at that. He’s fully aware he’s been thinking about her, that much he can admit to himself, but he hadn’t known that it’d been so clearly written across his face for the world to see.

“What way?” Jughead asks, just to be sure.

“Like I’m a normal person,” she says, shrugging slightly. “And not someone who’s had this tragic thing happen to them who might just dissolve into nothing. I won’t. I don’t need to be tiptoed around and I don’t want to be. I’m trying to move on with my life, but it’s a hard thing to do when everyone keeps looking at me like I’m just pieces of shattered glass.”

Jughead sighs - he’d been worried she’d say something like that. “For the record, I’m not,” he tells her. “Shattered glass could never make it through as many diner shifts as you do. Or haul foundation dirt. Or find the will to get up every day after all this.”

“You are,” Betty says with finality. “I can see it. You’re looking at me the way everyone else in this place does.”

“Hey,” Jughead interrupts, and a little on the firm side because he wants to be clear on this. “I’m not - believe that. Do I think you’ve had a tragic thing happen to you? Of course I do - it’s sad, and tragic, and unfortunate, and every other synonym under the sun and more. But that doesn’t mean I’m looking at you differently. We all have our pasts - you have yours and I have mine. I just - I think-”

He trails off then, looking for the right word - the single right word that encompasses everything that he thinks she is.

She’s beautiful, he thinks, even with her hair slightly frizzy from the humidity, and the rain that’s drawn a line of mascara from her eyelash down her cheek.

She’s brave, she has moxie - she yells at doctors, and she faces her days with an Agatha Christie book in her apron pocket and flowers on Pop’s bar counter, and she goes on with her life.

He thinks he’s found it - the word that, at least to him, means all of the above and that something more. Because she is this, she’s the very definition of it, and it’s precisely because she’s this, that she’s all the rest, too.

“Betty,” he says, unwrapping his hand around his mug and slowly reaching for hers resting on her knee. “I think you’re strong. That’s how I’m looking at you, and that’s what I see.”

He watches as her head draws back slightly, maybe in surprised shock, before tipping, just slightly to the side as she blinks twice at him.

She leans forward then, closing the divide between them; her movements are slow, but it’s still the speed of light to him - he doesn’t know that he could ever be ready for the moment that follows.

It’s light at first, the whisper of her lips brushing against his, and tentative - there’s a moment that he feels the edge of her teeth she has her bottom lip tucked under.

But it’s only a moment of uncertainty. She becomes sure after that, and as she moves a tea-warmed hand across his cheek, fingers brushing against his ear, there’s a renewed firmness to the way she moves her mouth over his.

It becomes one that he can’t help but match. He moves forward, too, feeling the plane of his chest brush against her breasts as he draws her to him, feeling his knee bump softly against hers. He remembers that night they’d slid a milkshake across a table at Pop’s, and how he’d thought she’d taste like strawberry if he kissed her then.

Now, as her lips press against his, sliding slightly as they reveal the faint taste of her mouth, he tastes only chamomile.

And it’s right, he thinks as she gently tugs her lips from his, the beat of her breaths rising and falling steadily under the hand he has on her back, that she doesn’t taste like the sharp tang of fruit, but of the soft gentleness of flowers.

He opens his eyes to find hers still closed, eyelashes fluttering against delicate skin.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” Betty whispers, the heat of her words falling against his mouth.

His voice is hard to find, but it comes to him eventually. “Probably not as much as I have.”

Her bottom lip is tucked back under her teeth as her eyes snap open, and there’s a moment her hands pause and hesitate before drawing down to the hem of her worn t-shirt.

“Betty,” he says when he catches a pale sliver of skin she reveals. “What’re you-”

“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, too,” she says. “But if you don’t, if you don’t feel this way-”

She trails off, but he doesn’t need to hear her words to know what she means.

“I do,” Jughead hears himself saying quietly. “Of course I do.”

Briefly, he wonders if it’s okay to do this with her after all that she’s told him, or if there’s some rule or something he could say to make this only about the fact that he wants her, and not that he wants to fix her.

But he reasons she doesn’t need that from him, because from what he’s seen, she’s not broken.

He keeps his gaze pinned to hers as she draws the shirt up over her head and tosses it to the side. She extends a hand over to him that he covers with his own, and only at the moment she tugs at him, drawing him to his feet alongside her, does he allow himself to really look at her.

She has on a simple bra, nude-colored and plain, and one that falls flush against her skin. There’s the outline of muscle across her stomach; she’s toned, even more so than he’d imagined. But painted over those lines, too, are faint silver streaks, ones he hadn’t expected until now.

He draws a hand to her face and gently tips her eyes to his, because there’s nowhere else he wants to be looking when his words land. “You’re beautiful, Betty,” he says softly. “Everything about you is.”

Then, he kisses her, lips slowly moving over hers and coaxing them open, the taste of chamomile growing stronger as he does.

Somewhere in the haze, he’s faintly aware of her hands on his shoulders, firmly guiding him backward, weaving him around the armchair at the corner, past little kitchen table and set of mismatched chairs, and towards her room. He’s trusted her thus far to guide his way and kept his eyes closed, but when the backs of his legs bump against her bed, he slowly draws his mouth from hers before pulling his own shirt over his head.

He’s never paid much mind to his own body before - it’s one in that it serves its purpose just fine, but when her hands trace over his chest, slowly and with delicate purpose, he thinks that to her, it just might be something more than that.

Betty’s hands flick over the button on her shorts before moving over to his belt buckle. “You’re sure you want to do this?” he blurts out when she does. “You’re really sure?”

“I am,” she says. “Are you?”

He ducks his head back down to the spot on her neck that’d had her back arching under his fingertips before. He doesn’t know that he’s been as sure of anything else in life before as much as he’s sure of this, even though his world, come sunrise, may be a messier, more confusing place for it.

“Yes,” he says, words gliding over her skin.

“I have condoms,” Betty says, pulling back to rustle in a drawer on her nightstand. A part of his mind, fuzzy and slightly incomprehensible, finds himself thinking that it’s strange that this is the moment shyness laces though her voice.

And in even the deeper reaches of his mind, he notes as he opens the box, is that it’s brand new. He wonders if it’s here in his hands now because she’d thought about coming to this moment with him, or because of something else entirely.

But she’s there, sitting on the edge of her bed, and looking at him like she wants him and like he’s beautiful, and that’s enough and more for him.

Jughead draws his arm under her leg as he tips her onto her back before his hands join hers as they make quick work of the rest of their clothes and the condom wrapper, tossing everything to the side. Those are later’s problems - or tomorrow’s.

Right now, he thinks, mind hazy as her hand guides him to where she wants him, there’s only her.

He feels her breath rush against his ear, hot and warm as he slips into her, and he allows himself a minute to just stop and feel it all before moving, to stamp it all - _her_ \- into his mind, because he knows that whoever he is and will be, and wherever he’ll go, he’ll always want to remember this.

There are moments he finds himself utterly lost in the world that is her. He floats in those seconds and minutes. He rises above the terrain. He’s lost in the sensation, in the feeling of what it feels like to move with and against her, in the smell, the scent of her so powerful and overwhelming as he tucks his nose into the sweet spot against her collarbone.

But then there’s the sound of her voice, steady as always, but quiet, too, just and only for him.

“Jug,” she whispers as his mouth traces the curve of her neck, the sharp line of her jaw, as his hands roam the soft expanse of her stomach and feel the fullness of her breasts under his palms, as his gaze catches and locks onto hers. “Jug,” she whispers as he moves with her, as she moves with him - the rhythm of them growing and building in competition with the beat of the rain against her windowpane. “Jug,” she whispers and repeats, again and again, as she holds and tethers him to solid ground.

 

* * *

 

He wakes with her head on his arm and the sun flooding his eyes.

There’s a moment, as he gently tugs his arm out from under her and rises to sit, that he’s left completely disoriented - it’s an unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed, and it takes a breath for it all to come back to him.

But when he looks back down at her, hair fanned out across her pillow and free from the confines of her ponytail, hand fisted near her bare chest, and mouth slightly open as her warm breath rushes over his hand, he remembers.

His feet find the floor quietly in an effort to leave her sleeping; he figures she doesn’t get enough of it as is, even if her bed is comfortable enough for him of all people to fall asleep in.

Then again, Jughead thinks as he swoops up his clothes from the ground and dresses, before laying hers over the end of the bed - maybe the fact that he’d fallen asleep has nothing to do with her bed and everything to do with just her.

And that, he has no idea what to do with.

Jughead pulls the door to her room shut, softening the click of the close as much as he can before venturing out into the living room. There’s a different kind of light that bathes her home in the morning. The rain has stopped and there’s a clear brightness now that falls over her kitchen table, the worn leather of the armchair, and the stripped wood credenza extending far past the little television set sitting on it. It’s still warm, but it’s of a different kind now, one with crisp silhouettes of the day painted across her floor in vibrant strokes. To him, this is the warmth of first bloom and rising sunsets, and less so a crackling fire gently heating a cold night.

He runs the pot she’d left out on the stovetop under the sink and sets it to boil before splashing a cupped handful of water over his face and swirling a second in his mouth. Then, on instinct, he draws his sleeve down his forehead and over his cheeks.

He’s very glad she hadn’t seen that. He’s sure that hadn’t been particularly attractive of him.

But luckily for him, he thinks as he tugs open the cabinet nearest to him, flannel is absorbent.

He doesn’t feel particularly good or comfortable rustling through her kitchen - it falls on the invasive side of things to him - but he needs to do something other than just sit silently on the couch and wait for her to wake up, and so he searches, making strategic guesses as to where she keeps what.

He happens upon her coffee first, a simple, sharp-smelling can from Hy-Vee hidden away amongst more little jars of spices than he’s ever seen in his life, various bottles of oils and vinegars, and different packs of flours, which slightly confuses him, since he’d been under the impression there’d been only _one_ type of flour.

It doesn’t surprise him, but he figures that she must be, at the very least, a decent cook.

Her door is still shut well after he’s gotten the coffee going in the single-serve French Press he’d found behind some bowls, so he ventures over to her bookshelves in wait.

 

* * *

 

He’d really meant what he’d said the night before, that he likes her book collection, and now, as he languidly runs his fingertips over the spines of her books, most old and well-read and loved, he realizes just how much he’d meant it. He has one bag and a two-wheeled ride, and those things combined mean he can’t be a pack rat. Clothes he has no trouble being conservative with - he’s had the same style since his own mother had dressed him; monochrome layers that mix and match with any and everything.

But books, each so singular and unique, and not at all interchangeable like this or that flannel shirt, he’s always had a hard time parting with. He has, if and when necessary, donated them to Goodwill or Anytown, USA’s local library, but it’s never been easy.

 _This is what’s most majestic,_ he thinks as he runs his eyes over her collection - _so many of the books he’s left behind before, here, tucked away next to each other, all in their rightful place; all at home._

On the bottom-most shelves, there are books he recognizes from reading himself to JB, way back when. It hits him, somewhere in-between Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl that these don’t belong to Betty, and when he feels his heart clench and throat work, he swallows deeply before stepping across the fireplace to the other shelf.

There’s a truly impressive collection of mystery novels sitting there prettily. There’s a shelf and a half of Agatha Christie alone and to his amusement, four different volumes of Doyle’s completed works.

And then, there’s his book - there’s _him_ \- right there on her middle shelf, cozied in between one of her Doyle’s and _The Maltese Falcon._

He remembers how she’d sat that one night at the diner, skirt tucked around her and knees slightly bent as she clutched onto a pen, furiously scribbling in the margins of a book he can no longer remember. Before he can even help himself or think it through, he’s reaching for his book, hands rapidly thumbing through the thin pages; they hadn’t used particularly high-quality paper for this print.

Jughead smiles when he catches the traces of her small, loopy handwriting. They’re all mostly reactive notes, he realizes as he flips through the pages; an _‘I like this line’_ or ‘ _good imagery_ ’ decorating the corners and margins.

He’s never been one for writing in books himself, but as he runs his fingertips over the blue ink, he thinks there’s something very beautiful about seeing her words on the page next to his own.

“Hi.”

Jughead jumps at the sound of her voice, barely managing to catch the book from skidding out of his hands and onto the floor.

“Hey,” he says quietly, feeling his forehead heat as he turns to face her. “I was just looking at your books.”

“Oh my god,” Betty says suddenly, and with such force that he almost jumps again. “You wanted that back, didn’t you? I just - I assumed you’d given it to me, and I wrote all over it,” she says, and he feels himself smiling slightly as her cheeks redden. “I can get you a new one. I’m so sorry.”

“You assumed right,” he says. Truthfully, she hadn’t. But when he tucks it back into its place, he knows that there’s nowhere else he wants this copy to be other than right there, proudly displayed on her bookshelf. “Keep it,” he says, hearing the shyness in his own voice. “I want you to.”

She false starts a few times before finally landing on her sentence. “I thought you might’ve left,” she tells him.

Jughead blinks at her words; leaving hadn’t occurred to him. He doesn’t know how he’d ever show his face in Pop’s again, or the rest of the town for that matter, had he just high-tailed out the door when he’d woken up.

But moreover, he hadn’t wanted to. At least, not until he’d said something to her first.

What that something is, though, he’s still working on.

“Oh,” Jughead settles on eventually. “I, uh, didn’t. As you can see. I made coffee.”

And even he’ll admit that he’s said some better somethings before.

“You did?”

He points to the French Press on her kitchen table.

“Oh,” Betty says, the tone of her voice surprised when she turns to see the pot he assumes she’d missed. “Did you want some?”

What he really wants right now, for reasons completely unknown to him, is chamomile. But his hands are feeling antsy and uncertain as it is, and he needs to do something with them.

“Sure. Yeah, thanks.”

A smile twists at her lips as she looks back at him from the cabinet, hand hovering over her mugs. “You made the coffee. I should be thanking you.”

“Oh,” Jughead says, cringing as the word falls out of his mouth - he really needs to come up with a better one. “It’s no problem. Sorry I went through your stuff.”

“What, my kitchenware?” Betty asks as he claims one of her dining chairs. “I don’t mind. It’s not like I’m hiding any skeletons up here.”

There’s a room with a closed door and a chalkboard hanging over it he hasn’t seen yet, and that frankly, he doesn’t feel the need to. Even so, he believes her.

He thinks he just might’ve met with all her skeletons the night before.

“Thanks,” Jughead says as she slides a mug to him before sinking into a chair across from him. Warmth spreads across his fingers as he cradles the mug, briefly flicking his gaze to the floral print decorating the surface.

He wonders just how many floral mugs she has.

“So about last night,” Betty begins after a beat and a tentative sip. “I want you to know that it wasn’t about me being sad. I kissed you only and because I wanted to.”

He nods slowly, the sharp scent of coffee wafting up to him as he inhales deeply. “And everything that happened after that?”

“Everything that happened after that was everything I wanted, too,” she says. “I hope you can believe that I wasn’t trying to fill some void. Although,” Betty muses after a beat, “in a way, I suppose I was.”

“Meaning?"

“Meaning, I kissed you because I like you, Jughead, and more than the I enjoy playing tic-tac-toe with you at Pop’s using broken toothpicks kind of way.”

He sips from his own mug in an effort to calm the waves washing around in his head.

She likes him. In the way he likes her, and _that,_ he’s avoided fully confronting until now.

“Look, I’m not deluding myself into thinking that this is going to turn into anything more than what it is,” Betty continues, voice slow and careful. “I know you have your life, and that’s going to take you away from here. I have mine, and that’ll keep me here. But I like you, and I’m attracted to you; it’d be nice to stop tiptoeing around that. I liked kissing you. And I’d like to do it again.”

She’s speaking to him with confidence in her voice, and that impresses him because he feels that everything that comes out of his own mouth is coming out jarringly squeaky and loud.

And she’s speaking to him with bluntness and honesty, and it’s only right that he afford her the same courtesy.

“Betty, of course I like you.” Honesties like these have never been particularly easy for him - those revolving around his pesky emotions - but this, he finds, is easier than it’s been before. “You’re easy to talk to and you’re not afraid to ask me questions that make me think. Your impression of Elmer Fudd might honestly be the best thing I’ve ever heard. You’re beautiful - whether it’s at Pop’s after a double shift or sitting there wearing an inside-out t-shirt after you’ve woken up. But you know how I feel about things like this.”

“Things like this?”

“Love,” he says. “Relationships.”

“Oh,” Betty says, and when she smiles, he’s at a loss as to what to do with it. “I’m not looking for love. Or a relationship. I suppose one day, I will be, but that’s not what I’m asking for from you - I know you can’t give me that.”

Jughead draws his head back slightly at his misunderstanding. “So what is it that you want?”

“To kiss you,” Betty says plainly. “To have sex with you. To catch fireflies later, if you’re still interested. And when you leave, if you wanted to send the occasional postcard every now and then, I wouldn’t mind, especially if you’re ever near the Grand Canyon. I love the pictures on them.”

 _Postcards_ , he finds his mind holding onto. _She wants postcards._

“I’m a woman.” Her voice drops low then, still sure, but almost wistful, too. “I’m still young. I think this town forgets that sometimes - here, I’m either five years old or the mom who lost a five-year-old. I think _I_ forget who and what I am sometimes, too. But I like sex. I like feeling wanted and desired; I like feeling like a woman, and I’d forgotten how much I do until last night.”

“Hey, I get it. I like sex just as much as the next guy. And feeling wanted, desired - I get it. Trust me, I do,” Jughead says, surprised at how much he truly means that when it involves her. “But Betty, I do _not_ want to hurt you.”

He watches as her lip twists in thought. “You know,” she begins slowly, “I think people get hurt when they have unrealistic expectations. I’m not expecting this to turn into anything more - I’m not harboring any hidden hope that I’m going to change you or your views on the world. I don’t want to, either. Your mind is your own to keep and mold, and your own to change if you ever want to; it’s not mine.”

She’s looking at him intently, eyes wide open and bright. Jughead looks for any hint of dishonesty there, anything betraying a heartbeat of uncertainty or untruth, and desperately, he looks to her hands, too. But they’re all perfectly still.

He believes her.

“I’m not asking an answer from you right now,” she says, rising from her seat and moving towards the sink to rinse out her empty mug. “I realize that this was unexpected. So think it over. Take your time. You’re, uh, welcome to stay and grab some toast or whatever. I might have some frozen waffles, too.”

He blinks over at her dumbly. “You’re leaving?”

“For my shift,” Betty says, nodding. “But really, stay if you’d like.”

He joins her at the sink, rinsing out his mug and placing it upside-down on the dish rack just like she’d done. “Thanks,” Jughead says. “But I should probably get back. Find a change of clothes and all that.”

Betty nods, amusement on her face as she hands him a dish towel when he starts wiping his wet hands on his jeans. “Fair enough,” she says.

Not knowing quite what else to do, he follows her to the door, running a nervous hand through his hair before digging it into his pocket. He feels like he should say something to the avalanche of words she’d shared with him, but truthfully, he doesn’t have an answer for her yet.

He has what his heart wants to do, what his head is telling him to do, and it’s been a while since they’ve been at such opposite ends of the spectrum.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” Jughead settles on eventually as he steps out into the day. It’s warm out now, the chill from the rain swept away with the sun, but an entirely different warm than the one in her home.

Betty shrugs as she slides her bare foot out onto the porch, humming at the feeling. “Thanks for walking me home,” she says.

“Oh, and hey,” he blurts out, feeling warmth creep up his neck as he does. “You called me Jug last night. It’s just - if you wanted to call me that, it’s okay. I know Jughead’s a mouthful.”

A small smile buds at her lips, and it’s the first instance of shyness he’s seen on her all day. “Oh,” Betty says. He thinks that exact shade of pink kissed across her cheeks is beautiful. “I, um, didn’t realize I did that.”

“I don’t mind it. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if you called me that.”

When her smile blossoms across her face, he finds himself smiling, too. “Okay,” she says. Then, with a quirk of her eyebrow, “I’ll see you around, Jug.”

 

* * *

 

He’s spent the better part of his day out at her once-wildflower field thinking.

He’d brought his computer along with him, but after staring blankly at it until it had run out of power, he admits to himself that he hadn’t really come out here to write. It’s a good place to - slightly cooler and breezier than anywhere back in town and far less suffocating than his room, and quiet; freeing. But that’s not what’s on his mind today.

Jughead sets his computer to the side before laying back onto the grass that’s folding and bending in the wind. He fights with the sun at first as he looks up, squinting at the sky and at the bounds and bounds of blue stretching above him before relenting and letting his eyes flutter shut.

He still doesn’t know what to do.

He knows what he _wants_ to do. But no matter what she’s said, and no matter what expectations she has or doesn’t have of him, he’s still afraid that what he wants will end in her getting hurt.

But how nice, he thinks, and how completely freeing, too, to just be with her in the way he wants to, in the way _she_ wants to, instead of siphoning those feelings off to the corners of his heart and pretending they don’t exist, even if only for a little while.

His love life, if he can even call it that, is pitiful, but it’s there. He’s no stranger to love - he has Joani to thank for that - nor is he one to sex either. It isn’t all that often that he does, but he’s met a girl or two a bar before and taken her home just to satisfy an urge.

But this - the this where sex and a woman who he respects and likes is concerned, he _is_ a complete stranger to.

He wonders where the right place is to stop is when it comes to his unpacking of her feelings and words. She’d told him what she’d wanted, she’d looked at him honestly, too. And moreover, he believes her. He believes that she meant what she’d said, and he believes that she’s a woman who’s fully capable of making decisions for herself and her own body - what she’d like to do with it and who she’d like to share it with.

She respects him enough to understand that his mind is his own, and so are his choices. He so much wants to pay that back to her and to give her the same privilege she’s given him.

Then, there’s his head, his loud, overworked head telling him to walk away, and that it’d be the honorable thing, the better thing for her if he did.

But, he thinks, he’s Jughead Jones.

And at the end of the day, only Betty Cooper knows what the better thing for her is.

 

* * *

 

The sun tracks across the sky, and when it starts inching towards the horizon, he heads back into town.

There’s someone there, interwoven into Betty’s story far more than he’d ever imagined possible, and who had once given him the clarity he’d needed the last time he’d thought about running far away from her.

There’s a soft glow flooding the porch from the sconces flanking Archie and Veronica’s door, and a single light on upstairs casting a wide shadow across the driveway. He’d expected a few more lights from those two on a Saturday night in - through the bay window, he spies that the kitchen is completely dark, and he can’t understand that.

But, Jughead thinks as he knocks, maybe they’re people who like to conserve, even if Veronica doesn’t strike him as the type.

“One sec,” he hears Archie call eventually, and he realizes then that he has no idea what he’s going to say.

The theme of his day, for better or worse.

“Oh,” Archie says as he pops into view behind the door, head pulling back in surprise. “Hey, man. What’s up?”

“Betty has a kid.”

He doesn’t know why out of all the things in the world, that had been the thing to fall out of his mouth, except for the fact that it’d been an easier thing to open with opposed to _‘what are your thoughts on the idea of me having a fling with your best friend?’_

“Had,” Archie says plainly, flicking the porch lights on. “Don’t confuse the two.”

“Did you conveniently forget to mention that or-”

“That was never my story to tell,” he says. “That was always hers.”

Jughead steps back, feeling his heart briefly catch as the heel of his shoe tips against the edge of Archie’s porch step.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. His heart has been lurching and tugging far too often in the past twenty-four hours. “I’m not accusing you. I just-”

“It’s a lot,” Archie finishes, and out of all the words and phrases in the world, Jughead thinks that Archie hit the nail on the head with those three simple ones. “I know. Want to go to Pop’s?”

“Pop’s? Why not here?”

Archie’s eyes, briefly and quickly, dart to the side.

And then he knows, as the understanding and feeling grows and sets in, why not here. It’s why there’s no light on in the living room or the kitchen - why there’s one on upstairs and one lighting up the basement. It’s a palpable rock-in-his-gut, twist of his stomach kind of a feeling, and it’s one that hasn’t changed since the younger version of him sat there as parents angrily bandied around insults and distaste in bloodied voices.

“Yeah,” Jughead says, stepping aside to let Archie out the front door. “Let’s go to Pop’s.”

There’s bad energy that comes from that feeling of heaviness, and he figures that Archie could use a break from it all.

 

* * *

 

It’s bustling with dinner-goers when he follows Archie into Pop’s, but there’s still a free booth tucked away in the back that his eye catches onto.

“Beer?” Archie ventures as he strides with purpose towards the kitchen, dunking a quarter into the jukebox on the way - _King of the Road,_ again.

“There’s beer here?” he asks, poking his head past the swinging doors. “Hey, Pop.”

“Jughead!” Pop calls to him, a wide grin growing across his face as he turns. “You hungry?”

He can’t help but smile himself, both at the greeting and at two of his most favorite words on the planet. “Starving.”

“The usual?” Pop asks.

“Please and thank you.”

“Archie?” Pop asks, handing Archie a bottle opener when he tugs out two beers from a fridge tucked away in the kitchen’s back corner.

“Same,” he says after a long sip. “But extra bacon, please. Thanks, Pop.”

“No driving after,” Pop tells him, spatula held up in place of a warning finger.

Archie holds both hands up, open beer bottles clutched in each. “We walked. Promise.”

Jughead is grateful that the back booth is still empty when they emerge from the kitchen; waiting around for a table and hovering over people who are still eating is deeply unsettling. Across from him, Archie slides onto the bench before swigging deeply from his bottle, a sip that matches at least three or four of his own.

“Better?” he asks wryly.

Archie nods slowly. “You have no idea.”

“I might,” Jughead ventures, and because he feels like the right thing to do is to give Archie the opportunity to talk about it if he wants to- “sorry I walked in on a fight.”

He watches as Archie’s expression turns sharply serious, eyes narrowing and cheeks reddening slightly. “It’s not like you knew,” he says eventually. “ _I_ don’t even know what the hell is going on.”

“The mysterious Centerville problem?” he guesses.

“I just don’t get it,” Archie blurts out loudly. “She says she’s there looking at the shop windows. But that sounds like bullshit to you, right?”

If he’s being honest, it does a little. But he’s not Veronica, nor does he know her well, and maybe for someone like her, looking at shop windows is more than a ten-second endeavor.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “But if she says she’s looking at shop windows, why not believe her? It’s not like it’s a particularly great lie if she’s covering up something.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Archie says. “But I just - I don’t know man. Something just doesn't feel right. But she won’t tell me what.”

“She’s uh,” he starts, not knowing how to put this as delicately as he wants to. “Is she pregnant?”

Archie shakes his head. “No. I asked. That’s what we were fighting about. I asked, and all she could say is _‘you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’_ ”

Jughead winces - it’s a harsh and cold statement, even to him. “Maybe it’s just a phase,” he offers. “People go through those sometimes, trying to discover their happiness and all that. Maybe that’s what Veronica’s trying to do.”

“Maybe,” Archie says, voice far away and distant. “I’m not an idiot; I’m not blind. I know she isn’t happy. I just don’t know what’ll fix that.”

 

* * *

 

He feels brave enough to venture back to the gargantuan, confusing topic of Betty after a second beer and a burger.

“Betty’s never mentioned the beer-fridge before,” Jughead begins.

Archie snorts out a laugh. “Because she likes to pretend it doesn’t exist. Pop doesn’t have a liquor license and god forbid she break a rule. Or, like, even think about a rule being broken. But it’s not like anyone here cares.”

He’d go as far to guess that a good portion of this town probably visits the infamous, not so secret fridge from time to time, too.

“Pop took pity on us when we turned twenty-one and had nowhere to go and drink besides Greendale,” Archie explains. “Oh, and now that you know - we’re supposed to throw it all out and pretend like it’s never been there if the inspector ever comes. But it’s Riverdale - they never do.”

Jughead finds himself laughing. “Pop truly is Riverdale’s savior.”

Archie nods. “You have no idea,” he says. “Pop used to bring my dad food every day when my mom left. He literally hand-delivered it himself. My parents got divorced a long time ago, and I don’t think it bothers my dad much anymore. But it did back then; he was a mess. You know, people always make sure kids are fed when stuff like this happens. Or maybe I’m just lucky and Betty made sure I was fed. But people sometimes forget about adults. Pop never did.”

He falls quiet in the beat after Archie’s words. Riverdale is a small town - the smallest he’s ever been to by miles and miles - and yet, brimming with more history and life than he’d ever imagined. It’s not an easy existence out here or one that’s any less meaningful than any other, and he’s ashamed that he’d once harbored the belief that it was.

“So she told me about AJ,” Jughead begins, working the unfamiliar name around his mouth. “Last night. I saw her at the cemetery in the rain.”

Archie smiles, so sadly and so wistfully. “He was such a great kid. Did Betty tell you she named him after me?”

Jughead nods slowly. “She did.”

“It’s still weird when I see her walking down the street alone,” Archie says quietly. “It still doesn’t feel real sometimes.”

In a way, Jughead thinks he understands. He can’t understand what it’s like to lose a child, but he does understand death. There are days where he’ll wake, groggy and blinking into the light, and reach for his phone to call his father; days he shoulders moments of the most shaking uncertainty that he’ll want a guiding hand on. In those moments before reality hits, his father is alive again.

“You said Betty made mistakes when she was younger,” Jughead continues. “Did you mean-”

“I didn’t mean AJ,” Archie says, and more firmly than he’s ever said anything to date. “Betty’s just - she’s so stubborn. She’s always been stubborn - she thinks she can do everything herself. And she can - if there’s one person in this town who can, it’s Betty.”

Archie sighs, drawing in a heavy breath. “I just wish she knew she didn’t have to. I wish she’d let someone help her every once in a while - I wish she’d let someone in. We tried to help her, you know, back then. We tried loaning her money. But my dad - he had medical bills, too.”

It’s a beautiful gesture, but he doesn’t think he’d have been able to take the money either. “I think,” Jughead says slowly as he pulls together what he knows of Betty, of himself, of life, “there are some things you just have to do on your own, no matter where they land you.”

Archie nods, but Jughead wonders if he truly understands the feeling. “The Coopers have always been proud.”

“She said you asked her to marry her.”

“I didn’t want her to be alone; I wanted to help her,” Archie says. “I think about what my life would’ve been like if she’d said yes sometimes.”

Jughead doesn’t know why, but his stomach drops and twists at that - the lives that could’ve played out so differently had Betty responded with a three-letter-word instead of one with two.

“And honestly? I think it probably would’ve been fine - what life with Betty wouldn’t be at least that? It would’ve been safe and easy. But,” Archie says as he idly drags a leftover fry through his ketchup, “we’re too different for it to ever have been great. I’m glad she said no. I love her, but I’ve never been in love with her. She wanted better for me than I did for myself and she’s always known what she wants.”

Archie’s voice turns serious then, in a way that has him sitting up straighter and pulling his shoulders back. “Listen - I don’t know what exactly is going on between you guys. But I know that you and Betty both think so much. Just go with your heart.”

He shakes his head, leaning back against the bench. “That’s very after-school special of you, Archie.”

Archie shrugs. “Maybe,” he says easily. “But between you two, someone’s got to.”

 

* * *

 

When he steps into the twilight, it wraps around him warmly and instantly, like a well-loved blanket; it sings its sighs to him as it settles and falls. He’s no expert, but he assumes that balmy, breezy nights like these are prime for catching fireflies.

“Which way?” Archie asks, one finger pointed towards the motel, and the other towards his house.

Towards Betty’s house.

And frankly, he’s still at the same fork in the road he’s been staring at all day.

He purses his lips, eyes swinging in either direction, both lit by the same row of street lamps and yet, with such divergent outcomes.

His own stuffy motel room or the expansiveness of Sweetwater River.

His own company on a Saturday night, or hers.

Head or heart?

Across town, there’s a girl who he’d promised to catch fireflies with tonight, a girl who’d said earlier that she’d like to keep on kissing him, if he’d like that, too.

“That way,” he says, following the path away from his stuffy shoebox-motel room. “I’m going to Betty’s.”

He doesn’t know if this is right.

But he does know that there’s a girl across this little town in a little house right now, and she’s one that he’d like to keep on kissing, too.

 

* * *

 

There’s a light on over her door.

It’s not as daunting as it was last night, when he hadn’t known what he’d find behind it, but his hand is still unsteady as it reaches towards the bell, wading through the thick blanket of dusk and night.

Jughead hears her feet shuffling first before she appears, smelling a little like bug spray and smiling widely at him, and instantly, he feels guilty that he’d ever questioned showing up when she so clearly hadn’t.

“Oh, good!” Betty says brightly. “Ready to get going? This is great timing.”

“It is?” he says for lack of anything better, and a little blankly, too. He’d thought he’d have a moment or two to sit across from her at her kitchen table and bumble out some inarticulate response about how he’d very much like to keep on kissing her while sporting some truly red cheeks, and that the moment seems to be quickly disappearing now has him thrown for a loop. “It doesn’t need to be darker out?”

Betty hands him a mason jar with a mesh lid fixed to the top. “It can be, but I think generally, I’ve had better luck when there’s still a little light out. Did you want to leave that here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your bag,” Betty says, nodding towards his messenger, an amused smile on her lips.

“Oh,” he responds as he slips the strap over his shoulder. “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”

Jughead hands his bag to her when she holds out her hand in wait, wishing he could do or say something far less awkward to the girl he’d quite literally fallen asleep beside the night before. He watches as she leans his bag up against her couch - she leaves the door flung wide open - but he doesn’t feel like he can step through without her explicit permission.

“I almost forgot,” Betty tells him as returns, holding his beanie out to him, “you left this earlier on the coffee table.”

He blinks at her a couple times before letting it fall from her hands into his. If he’s being perfectly honest, he hadn’t even noticed.

He can’t remember the last time he’d gone an entire day without his hat, and that he hadn’t even realized it was gone shakes him a little. But, he argues with himself, it’s also been a while since he’s been at such a huge crossroads, and about his personal life, too - his mind has been a little bit more than preoccupied today.

Still, it surprises him that he hadn’t even thought to miss it.

“Do you, um, mind if I leave this here, too?” Jughead hears himself asking, unsure of why he does, other than he feels that he doesn’t want or need it tonight.

Her answering smile is careful, a small but graceful twist at the corner of her mouth. “Not at all,” Betty says, gently holding out her hands in wait for it. “I’ll put this with your bag.”

She returns with her ponytail bobbing against her neck and car keys spinning on her finger, and Jughead figures he’ll think of how best to say yes to her on the way.

 

* * *

 

At Sweetwater River, he’s greeted by a melody.

It’s a low whistling he hears when he first turns his ear to the sound, the uneven blades brushing and sweeping against each other to the rhythm of the breeze. Then, there’s the slow rumble of the river that follows, the bass echoing in time to the crickets’ and cicadas’ quiet, soprano bray somewhere in the distance.

And together, it calms and humbles him.

It’s how he’d felt sitting out at the wildflower field earlier. The world is vast, he’d thought as he’d stared up at the sky, and as big and gargantuan as he’d felt his problems were, they’d still never come close to reaching the scale of blue extending on before him, or the rolling tumble of field stretching endlessly to the horizon, or now, the vastness of the world softly singing around him.

And that’s a comforting thing to hold onto.

“So what are we looking for?” Jughead asks, footsteps falling in time with her. They’re more sure of where to go, more confident now that they’ve been here before.

Betty looks over at him, slightly confused. “Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t want to scare them away.”

“What?”

“The fireflies,” he explains, voice still low.

It takes her a moment, but her eyes widen in understanding before crinkling at the corners as she laughs softly. “I think you’re thinking of fish,” Betty corrects gently. “They look a little like crickets, if you know what those look like. But longer, and not as scary, either.”

He smiles at that, tucking away that little piece of information about her into his mind - she’s scared of crickets.

“How long since you’ve caught them?” Jughead asks, voice careful; he figures this is the kind of activity one would do with a child.

It’s the kind of activity he’d like to do with his own if he ever has one, and something his parents had never done with him.

“About a year, I think,” she says. “We have a bonfire out here for the Fourth every year, and I caught a couple by the lilacs over there.” He follows the direction she’s pointing, towards a few tall bushes, sprayed over with a delicate, gentle purple. “I didn’t have a jar or anything,” Betty continues, “but it was nice to just hold one again, you know? It was a nice constant - they’ve been here since I was a kid, and they’re still here now, even after everything.”

Jughead nods. There’s never been much consistency in his life, but the little he has always brings him comfort.

She stops suddenly in her tracks before bending to undo her sandals. He thinks about saying something then, but when she smiles, exhaling deeply as her feet touch the grass, he decides against it. She’s feeling the moment and the space around them, he figures.

He remembers the night before, and how her hands had hungrily roamed his shoulders and chest, how they’d trailed their way across the expanse of his back as his gaze had fixed onto her, traveling the dips and curves of her body as they’d moved together, in time. He’s always been more of a visual person - he looks to open up his mind and heart, he looks to feel.

But he thinks that might not be true of her, and that unlike him, she feels to feel.

In the distance, he sees a bright flash of yellow light against a bouquet of purple flowers. He doesn’t expect it - neither the light or the strength of its blink - and instinctively, he draws his head back in surprise.

“Holy shit,” he blurts out, “that was it, right? That was a firefly?”

Beside him, Betty laughs gently. “That was it,” she confirms.

“They’re really… bright. They seriously light up.”

She laughs again, amused. “Come on,” Betty says, tipping her head towards where the light had come from, “I bet there’s more over there - they seem to like the lilacs.”

He follows her quickened footsteps towards the bushes, smiling to himself at the way her shoulders draw back in anticipation.

“Oh wow,” Betty says softly, turning her hand face up as she raises it near a firefly slowly meandering across a lilac petal. It’s a much larger bug than he’d anticipated - he’d thought it’d be more like a ladybug or fruit fly - and instinctively, he feels the need to backtrack. He’s never really cared for bugs. “There’s a ton here.”

Jughead watches in careful study as she gently curves and brushes her hand against the bloom of lilacs, and feels his breath hitch in anticipation as the little bug turns towards her palm before slowly crawling onto it.

He expects it to take flight then, disappearing somewhere into the beyond, but it doesn’t. Instead, it moves across her hand with ease like it’s meant to be there.

“I forgot how fun this is,” Betty says quietly, closing the distance between them before holding her hand out to him.

“What do I-”

“Bring your hand near it,” she instructs, voice gently rushing by his ear as she speaks. “They’re friendly bugs - they’ll just jump up on you if you’re close enough.”

“Just jump up on you, huh?” he teases, even as his own heart ticks into overtime as the edge of her palm brushes against his.

“Mmm hmm,” Betty hums. “They’re slutty little things.”

He fights the urge to violently shake it off as the firefly glides up onto the back of his hand from hers, telling himself to breathe through the creeping tickle and not to smack his other hand down onto it like his head is desperately urging him to.

But it blinks at him in greeting then, a single, fleeting flash of strong light pulsing through the dusk, and just like that, everything in his head falls quiet.

He’s never paid much mind to the simple pleasures of life school of thinking, but he thinks, as the firefly tracks its way across the back of his hand and around towards his palm, there may be more to it than he’d once thought.

He feels calm now, here with her in this place that’s sparkling around them, and simply at peace.

 

* * *

 

It becomes a game for them, a race to see who can catch the most, and when the mason jar is full, twinkling of its own accord, he declares himself the winner.

“I caught at least two-thirds of those,” Jughead says, surprised at the pride in his voice.

Betty rolls her eyes over at him. “Because you’re taller,” she argues. “There’s no way I could reach half the ones you did.”

He shrugs, partly because he thinks that indignant look on her face is endearing and he wouldn’t mind fostering that a bit longer. “Still. I caught most of them.”

“Fine,” Betty relents. “You caught most of them. Anyhow, if you’re done peacocking, I have one more thing to show you,” she says, jerking a thumb towards the river.

“Can I continue peacocking on the way?”

She looks at him then, eyes narrowed. _“No,”_ she tells him pointedly, and at that he laughs, partly at her, and partly in relief.

 _She’s still there,_ he thinks as they amble towards the water. He’d been afraid earlier when she’d pulled open her door, mason jar in hand because above all, he’d still wanted the person he’d gotten to know to be behind it. He’d wanted so much for her to be there, and he knows now that she’s still right here with him - the kindred spirit, the friend he’d made in the graveyard-shift hours in a small-town diner, sharp as a tack and sure of herself, even after everything she’d told him.

At the river’s edge, he watches as she dips her feet in the water, tapping her toes lightly against the cold current. “I’m not the interesting thing here,” Betty chides lightly when her gaze flicks to his. “Look up.”

He complies, tilting his head up towards the sky, even though he disagrees with her assessment. It’s dark when he does, the swirl of orange and dusty periwinkle from earlier now replaced with indigo, and the wide, endless blanket dotted with more stars than he’s ever seen in his life.

“Veronica had a full-on moment the first time she came out here at night,” Betty explains softly. “She’d never seen stars. Apparently the don’t exist in cities.”

“She’s right - they really don’t.”

Jughead hears her huff a little at that. “Doesn’t sound very nice,” she muses.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he says as his eyes track across the sky, and only in the quietest of reverent whispers, lest he break the night’s soulful song. And truly, he hasn’t. He’s never really taken the time to look up because there’s never been anything of value there worth seeing until now.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Betty says quietly, with something of an undercurrent of surprise in her voice, like she hadn’t meant to say it.

“It’s beautiful,” Jughead counters, and he thinks what he really means is that he could stay staring at these corners of the world until the end of his days. “Your world - this world - it really is.”

When he turns his gaze down from the sky and earthward towards her, he’s suspended in time as he thinks how lovely she looks right now bathed in midnight blue, eyes wide in wonder and mouth curved in carefully guarded pride. Like this, she’s just fully her in front of him, both completely part of this little universe and so transcendent of it, too.

“And,” he says, swallowing down the catch in his throat, “so are you.”

There’s no need for words, he realizes as she looks to him, a shy smile blossoming at her lips; in this world there’s a time for eloquent speeches and reasoned logic, and there’s a time for deep and shaking thoughts, too. But that time isn’t here or now.

Now, his fingertips slowly graze the line of her jaw and his eyes flutter shut at the feeling of her skin brushing against his, catching the faint outline of lilacs in the distance and a blinking twinkle of flashing light from her palm as he does. He kisses her then, as slowly and as languidly as the night moves and sways around them, and as the river babbles on to nowhere at all, just as his heart wants to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lilacs symbolize the first emotions of love. Chamomile, in the 19th century, signified energy in adversity.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> "Landslide" - Fleetwood Mac (but the Dixie Chicks version is also aces)  
> "Cry to Me" - Solomon Burke  
> "He'll Have to Go" - Jim Reeves  
> "King of the Road" - Roger Miller  
> "Firecracker" - the Wailin' Jennys


	9. Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to bugggghead for the most thorough beta job a girl could ever ask for with this chapter!

 

_You belong among the wildflowers_

She’s jolted awake when she hears the sound of something tapping and clicking over the low warble of the radio.

“Watch the-”

_“Ow!”_

“-Table,” Jughead finishes lamely as her head knocks hard against the table’s edge.

“Ow,” Betty repeats again, rubbing at the quickly-forming bump on her forehead. She doesn’t know when exactly she’d dozed off, but it’s not the greatest of wake-up calls, even if she might deserve it for snoozing on the job.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says, rising from the opposite side of the booth and disappearing behind the counter. The sound isn’t coming from the radio, she realizes as he distracts her with his rustling under the bar - it’s from the jukebox, and the thought of him tossing a quarter into it warms her heart in an odd sort of way.

He returns to the table just as swiftly as he’d left it, sliding into the space next to her. “Here,” he says quietly as he brings the makeshift ice pack to her head, only removing his hands when hers take over.

There’s a thanks dancing on the edge of her tongue, but it’s one she decides would be better shown than said. Betty tips forward, hesitating for a heartbeat since she’s never done this with him in public, before brushing her lips against his.

Sometime between the time he’d kissed her with a jar of fireflies in her hand and now, they’ve fallen into some sort of unspoken promise that has him spending his nights with her. It’s also given her the privilege of knowing what it feels like to run her lips against the thrum of the pulse beating under his jawline. But they’ve always locked that away and left it within the four walls of her house.

There’s no one here at Pop’s but them, but that doesn’t stop the thrill that comes from kissing him out in the world, within these four different walls.

“You’re welcome for the ice,” he says when she pulls away.

“Oh that?” She feels a brave sort of smile tug at her lips. “That was just for me.”

He’s bashful in return, tipping his eyes down to his lap. “No Pop tonight?” he asks eventually.

“It’s been quiet. Do you know what you want?” 

“Like in life?”

“Like in dinner,” she corrects gently.

“Oh,” he says. “Toast, I guess.”

_“Toast?”_

“Yeah.” He draws his head back slightly when she pulls a face. “What?” 

“Since when do you eat toast for dinner?”

“Since today?”

“Don’t you want a burger?”

Betty watches as his eyes dart around the diner quickly. “Pop isn’t here.”

“So?”

“So, I’m not going to ask you to cook for me.”

“You’re not asking me to cook for you,” she counters plainly. “You’re ordering dinner.”

“Yeah, that you’re inevitably going to have to make for me when I order it,” Jughead finishes. “Seriously, toast is fine. It’s not like I haven’t had it for dinner before. Honestly, if you tell me where the bread is, I can do it myself.”

“Why is this bothering you so much?”

He shrugs, sending out a small spark when his flannel brushes against the vinyl. “Because it feels strange asking you to cook for me.” 

Betty draws her head back at his admission. “More so than when Pop cooks for you?” she asks, voice rising high.

“Insanely - I’m not sleeping with Pop,” he points out. “It just - I don’t know, it seems antiquated sending you off into the kitchen at my beck and call.”

“I mean, it’d be in exchange for money.”

A wry smile twists at his lips. “Funnily enough, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

Frankly, she hadn’t thought it would.

“Okay,” Betty says, rising from the bench with a shrug. She knows she’s not going to get anywhere with him pushing this route further. “Suit yourself.”

“Where are you-”

“I’m hungry,” she interrupts breezily, skirt billowing out around her as she spins to face him, walking backwards to the kitchen with familiar, practiced steps. “And I feel like pancakes. You’re welcome to make some for yourself if you want.” She raises an eyebrow at him before disappearing behind the swinging doors.

There’s not an ounce of her that’s surprised when she sees him standing at the kitchen’s threshold as she emerges from the depths of the fridge, tub of batter in her arms. He looks a little apprehensive as he steps up next to her at the griddle.

“I’ve been known to set off fire alarms while making Top Ramen,” he warns.

“The stuff from the packet?”

“The very same.”

Betty does her best to mask her incredulity. “They’re pancakes,” she says with confidence. “Just pour and flip - it’s easy.”

 

* * *

 

“No, Jug, spatula _under_ the whole thing, not-”

“-it _is_ under the whole thing-”

“-you have to _slide_ ,” she instructs, pushing both hands out in front of her with gusto as she mimics the motion wildly. “ _Slide_ the spatula.”

“I’m _sliding_ the best I-”

“-still only under half, you have to-”

“-I’m just going to-”

“-don’t flip it yet! It’s not- or you know, do,” Betty concludes dryly when he turns pancake number four over onto itself.

She isn’t quite able to hold back her laugh when he stares forlornly at the ruined pancake sizzling helplessly on the griddle in front of them, bubbling pathetically as it sends up thin, twisting lines of smoke and steam.

“Toast it is.”

“Oh, Jug, come on,” Betty chastises lightly, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and tugging his hand away from the bread, “where’s your perseverance?”

“In the trash, next to that mess. And all the others, too.”

“One more,” she insists, pouring out another, smaller round of batter onto the griddle. “Remember - you have to-”

“ _Slide_ ,” he finishes for her, drawing out his syllables as he lightly mimics her voice. “How could I forget?”

Betty sends a pointed stare his way, but holds out her own plate of pancakes to him just the same. She doesn’t know if he’s had anything to eat beyond the Tupperware of cold pasta they’d passed back and forth at her house this afternoon before he’d left for the motel in search of a change of clothes, and she doesn’t like the idea of him hungry.

“Still stuck on the column?” he begins, breaking off and handing half a pancake over to her. “I’m paying you back for this, by the way,” he says, pointing at the griddle. “That one’s yours.”

“Then you’d better flip it right,” she tells him lightly. “And yes. And also no,” Betty sighs as he raises his eyebrows over at her. “I don’t know - do you think it’s enough? A column just filled with stories about the people who live in this town?”

“If you’re asking, I think _you_ don’t think it is.”

Betty inhales slowly, biding her time to think, before taking a bite from her pancake-half. “I just wonder if I should do more with it. There’s so much to write about in this world, you know? Don’t answer that - I know you do.”

Jughead looks thoughtful as he chews. “Don’t discount stories, Betty, or the people who tell them. They’re just as important as anything else - maybe even more so.”

“Oh?” she asks, voice ticking up in curiosity as she tilts her head at him. She hadn’t expected that emphatic or grounded a response.

“I just meant that I’ve been to other cities and other towns,” Jughead continues. “And in all those places, I’ve never felt like I wanted to know anyone’s story - I’ve never felt like I wanted to know anyone, period. But here-” he trails off then, but she gets where he’s going.

“You wouldn’t mind knowing a little more?”

To her, he looks like he’s wrestling with something great - two equal demons pulling him in either direction. “Yeah,” he says firmly after a beat. “I wouldn’t. All I’m saying is that there’s something about this place that makes me want to do that, and I mean beyond the obvious, too.” When he looks over at her, cheeks redder in a way she thinks has nothing to do with the heat radiating from the griddle, she realizes then that she’s the obvious he’d been referring to. “Besides, what could go wrong?”

“Cheryl could hate it.”

Jughead shrugs, giving the lone pancake a slight nudge with the edge of the spatula. “Do you care if Cheryl hates it?”

“No,” she concedes. “But I don’t want her to hate it to the point that she refuses to publish it, either.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Look, it’s your column, Betty - not Cheryl’s column, not your parents’ column - it’s just yours. You know this town better than anyone, and you know what they’ll want to read - trust your gut.”

She considers his words. It’s been a while since she’s trusted her gut about something like this, and at the core of it all is her own uncertainty - of the judgment and the words she hasn’t wielded in a while. Betty considers how much blind trust she can still put behind them - she’s no longer the same person she was the last time she did, and she wonders if and how that changes things.

“Trust yours,” she says eventually, nodding towards the pancake he has his spatula slid under; he’s hesitating, she can tell. “Just gently, really, _really_ gently… and - _nice!”_ Betty exclaims, bouncing buoyantly on her toes as the pancake lands fully and completely batter-side down; a perfect ten.

She brings her hand forward and slaps her palm against his when he holds his up, and for a moment, she finds herself thinking about how platonic that’d just felt. Nothing has in the few weeks - the way he touches her and kisses her, the way he breathes steadily onto her neck in the morning’s earliest hours - it all feels brand new to her. And, it feels a little like she’s living someone else’s life, too - the life of someone who’s all together happier and lighter and freer.

But just as quickly as thoughts of platonicness enter her mind, they flit away when his fingers close around her own and hold her hand steady against his shoulder. He leans forward across what little distance there is between them and kisses her, softly and sweetly, the way she imagines they’d practice and make familiar were they to do this for the rest of their lives.

“That,” he says, words falling warmly onto her, “was just for me.”

 

* * *

 

She does a double-take when she sees Archie and Veronica walk into Pop’s for breakfast, side-by-side and hand-in-hand.

“Well, hello!” Betty says, and her brightness is only halfway put-on. “How very unexpected!” That, she’d meant more teasingly.

Veronica tuts at her. “Yes, we’re together under the same roof and speaking at normal decibels - a miracle, I know.”

“I mean,” she begins with a quirk of her eyebrow.

“Relax, Betty,” Archie tells her, and when she looks over at him, he looks happier and more relaxed than she’s seen him in a while. There’s no stopping the wide grin that sets in across her face. “People go through stuff, but everything’s fine.”

“In fact,” Veronica continues, “we have news.”

“You’re pregnant!” It’s out of her mouth before she can even help herself.

Across the bar, Veronica’s eyes narrow fiercely at her. “Do I _look_ pregnant?”

“No,” Betty admits, feeling her cheeks flush as she does. True, the thought had excited her - a little redhead that Veronica would dress in designer duds and that Archie would toss a ball to like he’d once done with AJ - but she knows better than to assume something like that.

“I,” Veronica starts, folding her hands primly on the bar top, “got a job.”

“V!” Any other day, she might’ve stopped and let Veronica explain herself, but she’s far too excited for that. “Where?” Betty asks instead, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Doing what? Does it have benefits? What are your hou-”

“In Centerville,” Veronica interrupts, and when she does, Betty can tell that it isn’t at all out of rudeness, but because Veronica can’t hold back her answers any more than she can her questions. “At the boutique there - you know, that little one you bought that gold bracelet at last year?”

“Pretty Poison?”

“You’re looking at their newest sales associate.”

“Veronica, that’s amazing,” Betty says, hoping that the enthusiasm in her voice is enough to convey what that paltry word can’t. “I’m just - I’m so happy for you.”

“And I’m happy for me, too,” Veronica says. “But in all seriousness, thank you, B.”

“So that’s what this was all about?” Betty asks, turning over cups in front of Archie and Veronica before filling them. “You’ve been in Centerville the past month and a half because you’ve been… job hunting?”

She watches as Veronica slowly brings her cup to her lips. “Not initially,” Veronica says, moving through her words with care. “I went there at first because I just needed to get out of Riverdale. Nothing that I used to do had meaning anymore - my blog and those stupid flower arrangements, those online art history classes - it all just felt valueless. _I_ felt valueless.”

Betty looks over to Archie then for any indication of unease or disquiet. He’s never been anything but supportive and the most understanding to her, and to her knowledge, he’s never treated Veronica with anything less than that, either. But she also knows how much Archie balks in the face of change. It unsettles and unnerves him, and it takes him a moment to wrap his head around.

But when she studies him, looking for a twitch of his left eye or an erratic rhythm at his fingertips, Archie’s nervous ticks, there’s nothing to find. There’s nothing but pride on his face.

Pride, and his hand on the small of Veronica’s back, lingering a little too low for public decency, in her opinion.

“I really was just looking at the shops at first,” Veronica says, gaze darting between her and Archie at her side. “But the more I was out there, the more I realized how much I loved that. Getting up and getting out of that house.”

At that, she sees Archie flinch, likely at the words _‘that house’_ in reference to his handiwork, and Betty sends him a sharp look. Truthfully, she thinks Veronica could’ve chosen better words, but she also knows that this moment is and should be entirely about Veronica.

“I think this is what I need,” Veronica continues, hands spinning and gesturing as she speaks. “Something I actually care about to fill my day. Something I get up and want to go do.”

She extends her free hand over to cover Veronica’s, which have come to rest on the formica. “V,” Betty says quietly, her voice almost drowned by a loud rumble rolling down the road, “I’m _so_ happy for you.”

From her perch behind the counter, she can see very clearly exactly who’s disrupting the town’s utter stillness, rattling the diner car as he shakes loose the dust that’s long settled and dug into the ground.

And, she can see very clearly too, everyone’s head snap towards the windows before swinging over to her, as if she has some kind of explanation that she’s going to stand up on the bar top and announce to one and all.

“Your boyfriend is coming from where on that thing?” Veronica presses with a raised eyebrow, and Betty can tell from her tone alone that she’s really more interested in a different question, the one that goes something like _‘what is this guy to you, really?’_

Betty shrugs, partly because she isn’t in the mood to entertain the question, and partly because she doesn’t exactly know how to distill friend, sometimes lover, and confidant who might be leaving town soon, down into one succinct word.

“Ask him yourself,” she offers instead when she sees him turn his bike into Pop’s. She hasn’t seen him on it all that often - a handful of times here and there when he’s been too lazy to walk over to the diner, and once as he’d pulled up to her little driveway, much to the curiosity of all her neighbors hidden behind their lace curtains, she’s sure. But for the most part, she’s just seen him walk from place to place, nose slightly turned up to the sky. Never in an unapproachable way, and never haughtily; only simply as though he’s breathing in whatever he’s so captivated by as deeply as he can.

He looks good on his bike, Betty finds herself musing as he tugs his helmet from his head - a little less like the version of him she’s grown used to in the past few weeks, but still good regardless.

There’s a wash of relief that floods over her when he steps into the diner, the soft chime from the little bell following his footsteps as he makes his way to the counter. Betty hadn’t really thought he’d breeze out of town just like that, without warning and without so much as a goodbye, but it’s also coming close to two hours now since he’d driven loudly on the only road out of Riverdale, leaving nothing but the echo of his engine’s rumble behind.

“Hey,” Betty greets, and for a moment, she’s a little blinded by how natural it all looks - him, sitting there next to Archie and Veronica like that; like he belongs there as much as the blue in the sky and the green in the grass. “We were just congratulating Veronica on her new job,” she says, trying and failing at not emphasizing the last two words of the sentence.

In quiet whispers held between the space of two pillows laid side-by-side, they’ve talked about what they really think Veronica’s doing in Centerville, and what it all means, never settling on anything as positive as this - they’re slightly gloomy people, she supposes, for whatever that’s worth.

“Oh,” Jughead begins, leaning forward to get a better view of Veronica. To his credit, Betty thinks he sounds genuinely excited. “I’m guessing in Centerville?”

Veronica nods as a proud smile blooms across her face. “The one and only.”

“Honest work just might suit you.”

“I’ll thank you to keep your facetiousness to yourself on my very important day, Jughead,” Veronica replies coolly, and yet, with an ease that Betty hadn’t expected either.

“Good for you, Veronica,” he says, and this time, earnestly. “That’s great.”

Veronica nods over at him, and Betty thinks that if they only tried to find it, they could have even more in common than just being Riverdale’s outsiders.

He turns to her then, eyes narrowing at the mug and coffee pot she still has raised midair in either hand. “You okay?”

“I, um, saw you,” Betty starts quietly, palms growing clammy against the handles in her hands. “I saw you leave earlier, I mean. Everything okay?”

His eyes dart over to Archie and Veronica, and she clues into the fact that he’d much rather do or say whatever comes next without them there, putting up a poor showing of not eavesdropping.

Betty tips coffee into the cup she’s finally brought herself to set down in an effort to give herself something to do as he works up to the words, reminding herself not to send liquid overflowing onto the saucer when she sees him reach for his jacket.

Then, as she slides his cup over to him, the side of her palm brushing against the bar top as she does, his does the same, sending back a single flower in return.

His fingers gently linger over the pink petals, heart-shaped and entirely delicate, unfolding the damage done from journeying in his pocket. It’s a little worse for the wear, but in a way, that’s almost more beautiful to her - the way it still holds true to its essence even after traveling all this way to her. It’s been a while since she’s seen one of these, and she knows that this one he’s giving her now isn’t from anywhere around here.

“I want to show you something,” Jughead says, voice shy and sure all at once as he turns his eyes up to hers in anticipation.

“Today?”

She watches as his gaze darts down to the flower she’s been idly twirling in her hand. “I was hoping,” he says, almost shyly. “But if you aren’t free, it can wait.”

“No, I am,” Betty says quickly, shooting quick glances Archie and Veronica’s way when she sees their faces light up with twin smirks of amusement. Truthfully, she isn’t exactly, but she’s willing to make time for this. “I have that interview with Pop after my shift, but I am.”

His answering smile is quick, and one he tries to hide behind his coffee cup, too. “I’ll pick you up then,” he says after a slow sip, in a voice that entirely betrays his careful control. “It’s a date.”

She remembers how he’d stumbled and faltered over the word before, and not that long ago either; that he doesn’t now brings a smile to her own face.

“It is,” Betty echos back as she tucks the flower he’d given her into the bouquet by the register.

 

* * *

 

In the lull between lunch and dinner, and after she’s changed out of her grease-scented uniform into the sundress she’d worn over, she sits Pop down across from her at one of the booths.

“Here you go, Pop,” Betty says as her shaky hands set down a coffee cup in front of him before sliding onto the opposite bench.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you this nervous in years, Betty,” Pop tells her. “Not since that time you dropped the Klump’s dinner across the floor.”

“And look at me now,” she says, lightening the mood in an effort to calm herself, “carrying dishes on my arms with the best of them.”

“What’s got you so nervous?” Pop’s voice takes on the same, familiar tone he’d once used when he’d asked the eight-year-old version of her why she looked like a deer in the headlights.

_“I think I dropped one of my dollars,” she’d whispered to him when he’d stooped down to her height as she’d stared at her empty glass. “I can’t find it. And Archie never has any extra. I don’t have enough money for my milkshake.”_

_“Well,” she remembers Pop saying, and with all the kindness in the world, “why don’t we make a little deal? If you help Archie carry those bags back to his house and make sure that Mr. Andrews gets them, I’ll consider that a dollar paid - fair and square.”_

Later, she’d learned that those bags she’d guarded and protected with her life, holding them steady with each step she took, were some of the first meals that Pop had sent to Archie and Fred after Mary had left town.

Betty sucks in a steadying breath - there’s no reason for her to be nervous around Pop, who’s never treated her or anyone else in this town with anything but understanding and kindness. And yet, she is.

“I’m writing a column for the _Register_ ,” she explains, her words blending in a mix of anxious excitement.

“Oh, Betty,” Pop says warmly, coffee cup stopping mid-air. “That’s wonderful. I miss your writing, you know. I think this whole town does. I never see _Registers_ in here anymore.”

“Thank you,” she says as earnestly as she can.

“What’s it about?”

“So, that’s kind of why I was hoping to talk to you,” Betty begins, flipping to a blank page and ignoring the old notes she’d penned in there two, three years ago. “I want this column to be about Riverdale. Riverdale, and the people who live here. I was thinking the other day - we know so much about each other’s lives.”

“It’s all part of that small town living,” Pop tells her.

“Right,” Betty agrees. “But there’s also so much we don’t know. We know the superficial - I know that Mrs. Mantle had a cold last week, and that the Klumps’ cat got into my mom’s hydrangeas. But I don’t know about what it’s like for Mr. Andrews since his injury, and what it’s like for him to work with Archie now, because we both know he’s always wanted to. I don’t know about how you felt when you took over Pop’s after Pop Senior died. I want to write those stories,” she explains, “the ones that we don’t know - if you’re willing to tell them.”

She watches with unsteady breaths as Pop considers her words, looking off to the other end of the diner. He’d be nothing but kind about it, but he’s still perfectly at liberty to walk away and tell her _‘thank you, but no.’_

Pop rises then, placing both hands on the table for leverage before untacking, with the same care she’s seen him use to scramble eggs and flip burgers, the black and white photo she knows so well.

 _“That’s Pop’s dad,”_ she remembers telling Jughead that first night when it’d just been him and her and the rain, and for a moment, she’s lost in thinking about time - how time has gone so quickly with him here, how there’s a very real possibility time will slow again when he leaves.

“That’s my Pop,” Pop tells her, fingertips lovingly brushing over the photo, “and that’s my Ma, and my aunt Carol. She passed, remember? In ‘05 or ‘06?”

“‘06,” she rattles off on instinct, and Pop chuckles his low, familiar laugh at her memory, she’s sure.

“I was scared of taking over this place,” Pop tells her. “I always knew I would, Betty, and I wanted to, too, but that didn’t make the fear go away. I was still scared, just the same.”

“Why?” she hears herself asking as she leans forward, the cold, ridged metal edge of the table seeping through the thin fabric of her dress as she does. “Did it mean more to you because you wanted it? Did you not think you had it in you to do the thing you wanted?”

“Oh, no,” Pop says easily. “Even then, I’d been flipping burgers and making milkshakes for so long - there was nothing to be scared of there. Back when my Pop ran this place, it was the life of the town. It’d be full every night, there’d be dancing-”

 _“_ Dancing? Really? _”_

“Right there,” Pop tells her fondly, gesturing to the space near the jukebox. “Your mom and dad used to dance right there, you know.”

That, Betty can’t imagine. Her parents share familiarity and friendship, but not passion - she can’t even begin to picture what Alice and Hal Cooper swept up in the moment with each other might look like, and fleetingly, she thinks how sad that all is and how much she doesn’t want that for herself.

“This place was the heart of Riverdale when my Pop ran it,” Pop continues. “I wanted it to stay that way, and it scared me that it wouldn’t - I wanted Pop’s to still be a place where people would feel welcome and safe, even if it was a different Pop there to greet them and behind the stove. I wanted this place to stay the home it’s always been, I suppose.”

 _That word again_ , Betty finds herself thinking _._

“Pop,” she says, bringing her eyes up from her scribbled notes. There are times, fleeting ones, when she turns too quickly or when she’s coming out of a thought, that she sees Pop the way he used to look when she was five - smooth forehead and straight shoulders, and it always takes her a moment to fall and sink back to reality when that happens.

“Just so you know, this place is still the heart of Riverdale. It always will be.”

 

* * *

 

She sits, peppering Pop with questions and hand moving furiously across thin notebook pages until she hears a low rumble. She doesn’t need to look up to know who it is - Pop smiles widely as he peeks over the neon lettering in the window, and that’s enough for her to know.

Briefly, Betty thinks about how Pop will fare when Jughead leaves, and she hopes it won’t hit him too hard. She’s seen them talk quietly, low laughs bubbling over to her when she’s mopping or stacking dishes every so often, and she thinks Pop has something of a soft spot for the man she knows she unquestionably has one for.

“Thank you,” Betty offers as she gathers up her notes. The bell doesn’t ring, and she figures he’s giving her space in the name of waiting outside. “Really, Pop, I can’t thank you enough for all this. I’ll bring you a copy for a first look,” she promises.

Pop looks up at her with the kindness she’s so accustomed to, and something new, too - something she thinks might just be a little close to pride. “Sure, Betty,” he agrees. “Any other questions? I’m happy to answer them.”

Betty pauses, false starting before fully venturing ahead. “What’s your favorite thing about working here?” she asks, flipping her notebook shut - it isn’t for the column, but she’s always wondered herself.

There’s not even a second of a missed beat. “Watching this town grow. Watching people change,” Pop says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You know, it’s always been my favorite thing. I knew you and Archie back when you both still needed to be held and burped, and I got to watch as you both learned to walk and pull yourselves up after you fell. I watched as AJ, God rest him, grew out of his high chair. I saw Archie look proud when he brought Veronica in here for the first time, I watched you fall in love-”

“Oh,” she interrupts as she realizes exactly what Pop’s implying. “That’s… nice - it’s a nice though, I mean but - Pop, I’m not in love.”

Betty watches as Pop’s gaze swings from the window to the register, where they rest and linger. She turns too when she sees the older man’s eyes begin to soften, and for a moment, she thinks about how very out of character it is for Pop of all people to be looking at the cash register with such reverence - for as long as she’s known him, he’s never paid much mind to dollars and cents.

But in next to the old till is the little bouquet of flowers sitting prettily in an old jar of spaghetti sauce. There’s nothing too special in there - periwinkles and daisies she’d trimmed from her garden, and a few sprigs of lavender and Queen Anne’s Lace woven in, too. But she thinks what’s caught Pop’s eye is red, vibrant and bold and sure, from the handful of roses she’d covertly cut from her mother’s rose bushes a few mornings ago. Rose red, and the bright pink from the flower Jughead had given her earlier, bursting forth in color and bloom from the rest.

“I’m not in love,” she repeats again, a mumbled, unsteady whisper that she can barely hear herself.

“My mistake,” Pop says eventually, still smiling.

 

* * *

 

She’s a little disoriented when she steps outside the diner, and fails to realize until Jughead’s handing her his helmet, that he fully intends for her to get on his bike with him.

“Hop on,” he tells her, smiling a little smugly and a little roguishly, and all together, in a way she’s never seen him smile before.

“Onto… that? As in behind you?”

“Well, certainly not in front of me,” he says slowly, teasingly.

“Is it safe?”

“Perfectly.”

“You only have one helmet.”

“It isn’t far,” he promises, “and I’ll go slow.”

Still, Betty bites her lip, unmoving.

“We can take your car if it’ll make you feel better,” Jughead relents eventually, voice quieting with seriousness when she doesn’t answer. “I don’t mind. I just thought you might enjoy this.”

Betty doesn’t know what’s holding and keeping her buried within the ground like this, a tree held firm with roots reaching far below the surface. It surprises her how she balks in the face of something new now; as much as she’s yearned and dreamt of something to shake her out of her monotony, she hasn’t at all prepared for what it would feel like when faced with that day.

And it’s a little scary, she realizes as she turns his helmet over in her hands, warm from the strength of the June heat. It’s scary because it’s so new - what she’s doing with him, whatever it is she feels for him, a ride with two wheels instead of four - it’s all scary, because she’ll never _not_ be the kind of person that finds deep-seated comfort in rhythm and routine - even as much as she might crave something new.

 _But this is a chance,_ she thinks as she carefully studies his eager eyes, and it’s taken twenty-seven years for him and this moment to show up. One day, and likely one day soon, he’ll be wearing his helmet on his own head again, and there’ll be no invitation for her to ride on out of here with him.

But today, there’s a chance for her to do exactly that. And even if this chance should crop up in her life again, she knows it won’t look exactly like this - with this blue sky and this warm day, with just her and him.

“No,” Betty decides, stepping decisively up to the bike as she tugs the helmet over her head. Flipping a pancake and riding a motorcycle may not be a one to one, but then again, they just might be. “The car stays.”

Something different and something new - something to confront and come face to face with - it’s all the same principle at the end of the day.

“Go slow,” Betty warns as she brings her arms around him.

“Scout’s honor,” he says, with a three-finger promise for emphasis.

At that, Betty snorts. “Like you were a scout.”

She feels him pat at her hands that are firmly wrapped around his middle, and as he turns back towards the road, foot kicking down at the gear as he does, she catches the fleeting edge of his smile, boyish and carefree all at once.

Then, she’s flying.

Or, she’s as close to flying as she’s ever been in her life.

He isn’t going fast at all, a quick peek at his dash tells her as much, and on a normal day, she’ll drive around town ten, fifteen miles per hour faster than this. But it _feels_ fast - even with the soft top of her car pulled down, the wind has never flown at her face quite like this; it’s never wrapped around and cradled her as it’s doing now.

In her mind, she knows she’s the same person that she’d been in those moments she’d been standing on solid ground. But right now, feet traveling parallel to the road below them and her body pressed up so closely to his, holding onto him like he’s the only solid structure on earth, she feels a little bad. Like this, she feels a like she’s spitting in the face of all the things she’s been told not do as a child - to pay all the caution in the world to boys with bikes, to guard her heart and act like a lady, to think - always.

She feels bad, a little reckless, and a little wild, and all together, she feels so good.

It comes upon them soon enough, the two-by-four and the word Nowhere, exactly as she remembers it. But against the weathered pole, fingers of sun-yellow flowers rise up and twine around it - life blooming around the very thing she’s always turned her eyes away from, beauty and color imbued into the mundane.

And just like that, as she’s musing on the vibrancy of the yellow flowers that had never been there before, reaching for the skies with their brilliancy rivaling that of the daylight, the sign that’s kept her bounded in is put firmly behind her as she continues to push forward with the wind.

With her breath still held, Betty draws one hand away from her grip on him. It’s an unsteady hand, shaking slightly as it tries to find its balance against the rushing wind, but it reaches her head eventually.

And with one simple flick of her wrist, a practiced motion and one she’s done countless times, she tugs her hair free from her ponytail.

Any other time and place, and she might run a hand through her hair, evening out the knots and kinks, but today, she simply allows the wind to do the work for her. It floats out behind her, wildly tangling the strands she’d slicked back earlier. It whips against her cheek, and coils around his neck, the same way she wraps sweet words in quiet whispers around his ear.

And as she digs her chin into his shoulder blade, breathing in what him in the wind smell like swirled together, Betty sees him glance to her, before returning it back to the road.

His shoulders shake gently and his body rumbles within the circle of her arms, and she feels rather than hears his approval.

 

* * *

 

He stops unexpectedly, letting the engine stutter slowly to rest on a roadside she thinks is certainly nothing to write home about.

“We’re here?” Betty ventures, relaying her question as gently as she can. She figures that whatever he wants to show her is important, but as it is, she isn’t seeing much that’s particularly impressive.

“Almost,” he tells her, pointing towards a row of trees up a slight hill. “It’s over there.”

She watches as he hops the fence, smiling to herself when she notes it’s with far more grace and skill than she’s seen him employ before, and not too long ago either. Like this, one foot stuck between the posts for leverage as he easily swings himself over, she could almost believe he’d been doing this all his life. But he stumbles a little when his feet touch the ground, and that to her is better than if he’d landed perfectly - because he hasn’t been doing this for long, and she likes the reminder that his history is different than hers.

Betty accepts the hand he holds out to her, covering his open palm with hers when her feet land square on the other side of the fence.

“You’ll like it. I think.”

“You think?” she asks, huffing slightly as the incline tugs at the back of her calves. “It better not be some kind of dead animal or body.”

“You joke, but I feel like you’re the sort of person who just might be interested in that,” he comments lightly, tugging her up the final stretch of hill. “Look.”

And as she steps past the line of trees and into the open, she does.

Beneath her feet, the hills roll openly and lazily, anchored only by the vastness of the sky above, by the warm weight of tall grass blankets, and by the wildflowers - each delicate on their own and yet, monumentally strong when woven, hundreds and thousands, into the fabric of the earth like this.

There are times, more than she cares to admit, that she’s wondered if it is even okay for her to find and feel beauty again. She has the memory of a son who never will, at least not on this earth, and maybe, what energy she has left should be turned towards lamenting that, instead. Perhaps that’s the right thing to do.

Perhaps that’s what a good person would do.

But, she thinks as she looks out at the field before her, moving with the earth in as ancient a dance as time and the elements themselves, there’s simply too much beauty here - in this place, in this life that remains, in him - not to capture some of it for herself and enjoy it, at least a little.

“Wildflowers,” Betty whispers simply, unable to turn her eyes away from them, not even to look over at him.

“Very good,” he teases, nudging her arm gently with his elbow. “Pretty, huh?”

It isn’t a word that comes close to embodying what’s in front of them. But maybe, that’s also exactly why it’s the right one - it’s as good as any other. The studs in her ears and the diamond on Veronica’s ring finger are pretty, and so is her grandmother’s Wedgewood casserole dish that her mother washes by hand every Sunday night.

But places and times like these transcend things as ordinary as words, she realizes now. Moments like these belong to the senses and to feeling alone, to those otherworldly things that simply can’t be boiled down into as simple a reduction as letters or metaphors.

To do so would be an injustice to this corner of the world that needs, nor wants for mere words - it simply just is, and it’s simply meant to be felt.

“Yeah,” Betty agrees, squeezing his hand as she does. “Pretty.”

 

* * *

 

The tree she’d left her shoes by is nothing more than a dot in the distance when his voice comes to her, loudly at first, before he adjusts it down to sit with the softness of the breeze.

“Race you.”

It isn’t at all what she expects, so she stops, bare heels digging into the dirt. “Excuse me?”

The smile he returns with is one of her very favorites she’s seen on him. “You said you used to race with Archie when you were little,” he reminds her, nodding towards the openness ahead. “Race you now.”

Her instinct is to turn him down - these are totems and memories she has with the most important people in her life, and attaching another person to what she holds so sacred, opening up the door and letting him into that space, too, may just damage what’s already been hurt and trampled on beyond repair. _It’s like the wildflowers,_ she thinks - _step on them, run through them one too many times, and they’ll no longer bloom._

But she also knows what it’s like to run out here in a place like this, a thing and feeling she’s never been able to replicate in her life, and she’d like for him to know it, too.

“I’m fast,” she warns, placing her right foot out front.

Gamely, he swoops his hat from his head and tucks it into his back pocket. “So am I.”

“After three.”

“What, like one-two-three, go, or one-two, go on three-”

“ _After_ three, not _on_ -”

“Just checking, sometimes people use on and after inter-”

 _“One-two-three-go!”_ she shouts, because she just can’t help herself when he looks so serious like that, brow furrowed and lost in the minutiae of a word.

Over the rush of blood to her ears as she takes off - zero to a hundred in the span of a few quick breaths. In the melody of her heart beat and the thud of her feet, she just about makes out the muffled sound of him crying foul before taking off after her.

And somewhere in all that, there’s the peal of her own laughter, too.

Even with her head start, the sound of his footsteps steadily grows behind her. She’s giving it everything in her - elbows punching in the wind and skirt flying out behind her as she stretches her stride to its furthest reaches - but Betty realizes quickly that he hadn’t been lying; he’s fast, and much faster than her.

It’s an entirely different sound, she thinks as he blows right past her - him making his mark on the earth belongs entirely to him and him alone. It’s not the thunder of Archie’s booming stomp, claiming the ground with force and strength, and it’s not her son’s brave steps, as sure as the sun even as they followed her into an unknown world. This sound is just his - light, like he’s no stranger to running, and a little unsure - of where to stop, of where he’s going, but with his own brand of confidence in it, just the same.

Then, as quickly as the sound pulses near her, it fades, and he puts distance between them.

 _Faster_ , she thinks like she’s always done, focusing in on him, a blurry image of windswept hair and dark jeans. _Just a little bit more._

And with a sharp inhale and her feet reaching for more earth, more ground, more him, she pulls herself closer, the beat of their footsteps drumming together loudly amidst the quiet sway of the grass.

Then, when she’s sure she can reach him and only then, she launches herself from the ground and jumps on him.

When his balance breaks under her, Betty rolls herself off to the side, hitting the ground with a thud before tumbling to a stop in a tangle of arms and legs. Just out of reach, she’s vaguely aware of him doing the same, a mess of dark hair and flannel falling against green grass, the sounds of his surprise and shock rising above the ring of her own laughter.

 _“You!”_ Jughead starts accusingly when he sits up to face her, eyes wide, and something of a knowing grin building across his face.

“What?”

“I was winning! That’s why you did that!”

“Were you winning, though?” Betty challenges, voice ticking up high in a question she very well knows the answer to.

_“Yes!”_

“Debatable.”

“Not really!”

“I was catching up,” Betty points out. “I wouldn’t have been able to jump on you otherwise.”

Something in between disbelief and incredulity crosses his face as he blinks over at her. “You’re a sore loser,” Jughead says slowly, like he’s happened upon some kind of magnificent revelation.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you’re surprised.”

“You’re just so-”

“Nice?” she finishes with a little huff.

“I was going for something closer to gracious.”

A word she prefers infinitely to her alternative. But still, Betty shrugs. “I can be gracious and still like to win.”

“There’s liking to win and there’s flat out cheating.”

“Okay, but what is really is _‘cheating’?_ ” Betty presses, fingers bracketing the last word in air quotes. “Some might call me jumping on you cheating-”

“Me, I would definitely call it that-”

“But others might just call that an alternative method of winning.”

She holds her face steady as he stares at her, wide-eyed and like she’s grown an extra head before flopping back down onto the grass. For a moment, Betty worries that she may really have upset him - if the reverse had been true, and if he’d been the one to stop her on the road to unimportant victory, she knows that she’d be at least a little peeved about it.

She is, after all, an incredibly sore loser.

But when he holds his arm out to her, the gesture she’s come to learn and recognize as an invitation, she figures she’s off the hook.

“Alternative method of winning,” he parrots back as her head falls to rest on him, his fingers gently tugging loose the tangles in her hair. “I’m never playing a board game with you.”

“Advisable,” she agrees. “I memorized all the Trivial Pursuit cards years ago.”

He laughs, and even when the sound of it becomes nothing more than an echo, the beat of his heart under her ear remains, strong and resolutely steady.

 

* * *

 

Minutes have passed, or hours, she isn’t sure when he shakes her arm gently for her attention.

“Hey,” he begins, and she tips her head up to his. “What’s your favorite flower?”

She’s only ever had the one. “Gladiolus.”

Something breezes over his face at that, like a rain cloud darting across the open sky, before it disappears just as quickly.

“What?” Betty presses.

“What?” he questions back. “It’s nothing.”

“You don’t look like it’s nothing.”

“It’s close to my mom’s name,” Jughead admits after a beat.

It doesn’t take her long to make the connection - she’s always been good with names. “Gladys?” she guesses, and he nods.

“It’s not important - forget I said anything.”

But she’s never been one to forget something like that.

“You know, a name’s just a name,” Betty ventures quietly, plucking up one of the flowers by her hand. “Roses by any other and such.”

_He loves me, he loves me not._

“But would they smell as sweet?” he asks. “Truly?”

“Wouldn’t they?”

“You really think that if we named the rose a dung beetle, or moist, or Archie’s socks at the end of a long day of hammering drywall-”

“A mouthful, but go on-”

“Even then, you still think a rose would smell exactly as it does now?” he asks, plucking off a few of the petals on the little flower in her hand as he does. “Or is it tainted, simply by virtue of the horrible thing we’ve deigned to call it?”

_He loves me, he loves me not._

“It could be,” she concedes. “But it’s all about looking past it, isn’t it? Or smelling past it. A name’s just a word at the end of the day - it’s just something we use to refer to a thing. The essence of the thing remains the same, and so does its core. Or maybe, it goes the other way.”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe the nature of the thing gives new significance to the name. Roses smell wonderful - maybe what we choose to call it, whatever it is, becomes wonderful, too, simply because of that.”

“Maybe,” he says simply, tapping at her arm twice in warning before he moves to sit up. “Do you see any? Gladioluses? Gladioli?”

”Gladioli,” she corrects as she looks out onto the field. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s a shame.” His voice is light, but still, there’s something underlying his tone that makes her think that if he had it in him to conjure up those flowers at will, he’d already have done it.

“Jug,” Betty says, trying briefly to keep her skirt tucked around her legs before giving up entirely. Her legs past her knees are nothing he hasn’t seen before at this point. “Why here?”

There are the easy answers - the wildflowers and the grass, the openness of the sky, his good heart and mind, and all of that likely has some part to play in why they’re here now.

But she knows there’s more to it than that, too.

“You know,” he starts quietly, and almost shyly; it takes a minute for his eyes to reach hers. “One of the things about Riverdale that’s different from anywhere else I’ve been is that it’s slow. I like that about it. I feel like I can just take a minute to just _be_ in the world around me here. I feel like I can breathe.” He pauses then, brushing his fingers gently over the spray of pink flowers by his hand, the very same one he’d brought to her earlier before plucking one from the ground.

“Riverdale is slow, but you’re not. You do a lot for other people, Betty, and since I’ve been here, I’ve never seen you stop,” he says, bringing the flower to his nose and inhaling before holding it under hers. “I guess I just hoped this place might let you.”

Lowering her head slightly, one hand pushing back the errant wisps of hair from her face as she does, Betty breathes in deeply. It doesn’t smell like much, this familiar little pink flower, but there’s enough of a note of something sweet lingering between the petals. And, together with the scents the breeze sends her way - a mix of grass and wildflowers, of summer sky and warmth, and maybe even of him - it’s the closest thing to freedom she’s smelled in a while.

“It’s okay to slow down every once in a while,” he tells her, warm fingertips brushing against her cheek as he tucks the flower’s stem behind her ear. “You’d miss all this if you didn’t.”

She looks at him after that, bringing her eyes squarely to his as she really and truly looks at him. She knows his face well now - there’s a faint scar near his left eye from some fight he’d gotten into at age ten - _I’m not poor,_ he’d defended to someone on the playground, _and my family’s not poor,_ even though they had been. There’s the shadow of a scrape under his chin from the first time he’d fallen from his bike, and eyelashes that she’d told him very plainly one morning were categorically unfair because he had them and she didn’t.

These are things she’s discovered, unearthing and learning them as she’d brushed her fingers over him in quiet exploration.

But there’s also so much she hasn’t taken note of yet. He’s tanner, and his shoulders are a little broader - days out at Archie’s site tend to have that effect. He looks a little less haggard, a little less tired, and all together, healthier with color on his skin like this and muscle on his bone.

And these things are things she probably wouldn’t have seen if she hadn’t taken the time to remember the man that she’d met on a rainy night, if she hadn’t taken the time to look closely at the man sitting in front of her, now blanketed by the sun.

Betty inhales then, willing her mind quiet as she draws in as deep of a breath as she can. It’s been a while since she’s breathed in air this clean - this sharp and fresh.

It’s been a while since she’s felt this free.

When the breeze tips her forward in the most gentle of whispers, she allows herself to follow it. _Slow,_ she thinks as she brings her hand to his cheek, fingers curling as she tugs him forward to meet her. _Slow_ , she thinks as she scoots closer and brushes her lips against his, feeling the way his mouth moves against hers as she does.

Slow, because she knows that she’ll want to remember this moment one day, and it takes time to memorize something as rich as this, a tapestry of color and life and feeling all woven into one.

“Do you know what they are?” he asks when she pulls away from him, tapping gently at one of the petals fluttering against her temple.

She does, but she wonders if he does, too.

“Do you?”

He shakes his head, and a part of her feels like feigning ignorance; it isn’t a flower without renown and significance, and she doesn’t want him thinking she’d been looking for something that he hadn’t meant or intended.

But a place like this, pure and as untouched as anything has ever been, isn’t a place that deserves to be sullied by her untruths.

“They’re roses,” she answers eventually. “Prairie roses.”

There’s a world of expression that crosses his face in the span of his blink. Surprise, in the way he just slightly pulls back, disquiet and a little confusion as he looks to the flower in her hair.

Then after it all, calm, and a smile.

“Fitting,” he murmurs.

Something in her heart catches, and there’s a part of her that wonders what he really means - if he’s talking about its name or its beauty, or maybe something else entirely.

Overhead, the sun dips low across the sky, and there’s a majesty to the harmony of blues and oranges and lilacs that begin to send the day away, and that start welcoming in the night. Words and realizations can come later, Betty determines - when life falls back into routine and when there’s less beauty to it all - and that time will come again, far too soon.

This moment won’t. It will pass like every other one and fade from present to memory, and it’ll be gone, just like that. She’ll pull from it one day when she searches the corners of her mind - when she finds herself wanting to remember this place and him. But even when she does, she’ll never be able to smell this breeze again, exactly the way it’s presenting itself to her now. She’ll never see the wildflowers looking just like this in her mind’s eye, and she’ll remember, but with inexact precision, the warmth of his hand in hers, the curve of his shoulders when drawn down with calm, and the freeness in her heart.

The time to enjoy all this is now.

On her lap, she looks to the daisy sitting in her pooled skirt and at the single petal that remains. _One is a lonely number_ , she thinks - one petal, one person - one can be achingly lonely.

She tugs the petal free before releasing it onto a ribbon of wind, tracing its path into the world.

_He loves me._

 

* * *

 

Betty startles at the sound of the bell’s chime over the door, eyes still shut.

He’d still been sleeping when she’d slid out from under his arm thrown lazily across her hip, gently insisting that he stay there when he’d offered to follow her to Pop’s for the start of her shift. He’d stayed up with her the night before, she’d argued, and he hadn’t protested much.

But she knows it’s not him - he’s already here. She can hear the soft click of his keyboard across from her.

 _Heels_ , Betty realizes almost immediately as she hears something loud tap across the old tile she’d mopped earlier. Heels, and the faint scent of peach, and that’s all Betty needs to know for identification purposes.

“This is cozy,” she hears her mother comment, and Betty feels her eyes roll involuntarily, even behind closed lids.

“Can I help you?” Jughead’s voice follows, skeptical, and coming in quickly before she can even think about offering hers to the mix.

“You can tell me why you’re asking me that instead of my daughter.”

“Mrs. Cooper,” Betty hears him say, rising from the booth so quickly that his knee knocks against the underside of the table. Out from under her barely opened eyes, she sees him approach her ridiculous looking mother, standing there in nude pumps and a matching purse in the middle of the night.

Betty nearly calls the charade off when she sees her mother look wearily at Jughead’s hand, one plucked eyebrow raised, her own firmly pinned to her twin set.

“You haven’t answered my question,” her mother says, taking his hand and shaking only once.

“Well,” Jughead begins all too brightly to be earnest. “Betty’s sleeping. As you can see.” She’s vaguely aware of him angling his body towards the booth. “I can wake her up if you want; she wakes pretty easily. But you’re really here to talk to me, so I won’t bother.”

There’s a large and long pause she feels herself breathing shallowly through before her mother relents. Against her will, Betty smiles as Alice Cooper clicks her way over to the bar before helping herself to a cup of coffee. Through narrowly opened eyes, she watches as Jughead follows, sliding onto the barstool across from the coffee pots.

“Are you dating my daughter?” her mother ventures plainly.

Then, there’s quiet again, filled with only the low hum of the radio’s warble.

“I’m spending time with her,” Jughead answers eventually. She can hear how carefully he’s choosing his words. “If you want to call that dating, that’s your prerogative, not mine.”

With the slightest of twists, Betty cranes her neck towards the bar, head brushing uncomfortably against the wall. It’s no matter, though, because she’d like very much to see what her mother’s face looks like after a remark like that.

Extremely pinched, just like she’d expected.

“I’ve seen you leave in the morning,” her mother continues after a sip. “And I’ve seen your - _vehicle_ in the driveway, too, young man. Don’t think I haven’t.”

She’s sure her mother must’ve gotten a thrill out of young man-ing someone.

“You don’t call that dating?”

His shoulders rise and fall in an easy shrug. “We call it what we call it.”

“Are you trying to irritate me intentionally or is this simply a talent of yours?”

“The latter, ma’am,” Jughead says, entirely innocent, and Betty feels the corners of her mouth twitch upward.

“You were in prison.”

“Yep,” he answers plainly. “But you knew that already.”

She reminds herself to both ask him about that later and to have some very strong words with her mother about not prying into other people’s business.

“Has Betty invited you to the barbeque?”

“The what?”

“The Fourth of July barbeque,” her mother continues in a tone that Betty thinks means, that for whatever reason, should resonate or mean something to Jughead, “it’s annual.”

“Betty’s never said any-”

“We’ll see you there.”

“Oh,” she hears him answer slowly, and with something tugging sharply at her heart since she thinks what comes next goes something along the lines of _‘that’s not possible, because I’ll be gone by then.’_

“That’s really kind, but that’s not-”

“-up for debate,” her mother finishes firmly. “Polly and Jason will be there. You’ve met them.”

At that, Betty nearly snorts. She _thinks_ what Jughead will make of that monster of a statement is that Alice Cooper, fire breathing dragon that she is, expects all men sharing beds with her daughters to show up at family festivities.

But, she _knows_ what her mother actually means is that Polly Cooper met Jughead Jones light years before Alice Cooper did, and now, he’s going to be punished for that right alongside her for it - torture method, her mother’s pointed questions at the barbeque and Hal Cooper’s questionable guacamole.

“Okay,” Jughead says eventually, clearing his throat as his syllables crack. “I’ll, uh, see you there then. Thank you,” she hears him tack on quickly, likely in response to some sort of raised brow.

There’s the clink of change falling onto the formica next, followed by the sound of her mother’s shoes crossing the diner car - no goodbye, no parting words, but Betty supposes that’s always been her mother’s way.

Then, there’s only the echo of the little bell and the sound of his exhale.

“I know you’re awake,” she hears him call over to her. She can tell by his voice that he’s smiling, or at the very least amused, so she holds her eyes shut for a little while longer, wondering how far he’ll go.

“That’s not how you were sitting when I got up,” he tries again, sliding onto the bench next to her and poking at her arm as he does.

Still, Betty holds her face as steady as she can, even as she feels her cheeks heat from held-back laughter.

“This is that sore loser thing manifesting, isn’t it?”

She lolls her head against the back of the bench for emphasis.

“Fine.” Against her arm, she feels him shrug. “Suit yourself - we can talk later. It’s all the same to me.”

She’s about to throw in the towel when she feels him slide his arm around her, gently tugging her towards him, her head lifts off the back of the bench and leans onto his shoulder instead.

“In case you’re really sleeping,” she hears him say to her quietly.

 

* * *

 

The second time she wakes, it’s a far friendlier voice.

“Betty,” she hears someone call, and the first thing her mind latches onto as her eyes flutter open is that it’s light out. The next is that there’s something heavy on her head and a hand loosely holding hers. “Betty.”

“Pop!” she says, straightening the head that’d been resting on Jughead’s shoulder and jolting him awake. “I’m so sorry!”

“Hey, Pop,” Jughead adds, a little sheepishly and voice still laced with sleep as he blinks furiously into the light.

Betty thinks that Pop might just make some kind of offhand comment about the last thing she’d said when she’d seen him, or maybe even tell her off for sleeping her shift away, and on a customer no less.

“I’m so sorry,” Betty repeats, standing quickly and pushing her calves and foot into Jughead’s in an effort to get him to do the same.

“It’s okay, Betty,” Pop tells her, holding up a hand.

“It’ll never happen again.”

“Why don’t you take the night off?” Pop offers, and for a moment, Betty wonders if he’d completely misheard her. His hearing isn’t what it used to be, Pop’s told her time and again. “You’ve covered so many late shifts these past few weeks, Betty.”

“Oh, that’s really not-” she begins, and her instinct is for her next words to be _thank you, how kind, but I’m fine._

But next to her, Jughead’s looking bleary eyed and still only halfway to wakefulness, one hand resting against the table top for balance. And in this diner, slightly chilled from the dawn’s breeze rushing through the cracks and crevices, he looks soft and completely warm. _And how nice it’d be_ , she thinks, _to crawl into bed with him and feel that safety around her_.

“Thank you, Pop,” Betty finishes, because maybe it’s okay that she take the time for herself just this once. “I’d like that.”

 

* * *

 

Outside, the sun peeks over the horizon, but it only serves to drum up a yawn. His shoulder is infinitely more comfortable a place to lay her head than the booth divides are, but it’s still no substitute for a pillow and a bed.

“Still tired?” she hears him ask. He’s still sleepy, she can tell, and it’s only recently that she’s learned this intonation of his voice. “I can drive if you want.”

 _“_ Can you?” she hears herself wondering out loud.

“Yeah, I just offered-”

“No, I meant _can_ you drive?”

That gets her an eye roll in response. “I know how to drive a car, Betty.”

She gives herself a minute of lip twisting and eye narrowing, holding back a laugh as he grows all the more exasperated with her. Truthfully, Betty doesn’t like the idea of anyone taking her wheel but her own two hands.

But the selfish part of her wants very much to know and see what him driving a car looks like.

“It’s a stick,” she warns as she tosses the keys over.

“I realize. I learned on a truck.”

As he starts the engine, a low purr rumbling against the currents of the rising morning, Betty thinks that she likes this look on him - breeze catching his hair and slivers of dawn and sunlight sweeping across his face, wheel turning easily under his palm. Riding with him on his bike is nothing like this - she can’t see him when she’s back there, and when she’s the one driving, she’s looking at the road, not him.

 _But this view,_ she thinks as she turns a smile towards herself, _is a pretty magnificent one._

“So,” Betty begins after he’s turned out of the lot, corners of her mouth twitching in anticipation of her question. “How’d you like my mother?”

The heel of his hand comes down once against the wheel in victory. “I knew you were awake.”

“Do you think she did?”

“Probably. Your eyes were fluttering the whole time.”

“Crap, really?”

“Nah,” he says lightly, and when he does, Betty smacks his arm with the backs of her fingers. “You breathe differently when you’re sleeping - heavier,” he says. “Honestly, it’s close to snoring.”

She shakes her head at him, and even as she purses her lips, they tug up into something of a smile. The fact that she snores, as much as she denies it up and down, is something she’s well aware of. It’s an intimate something that only a handful of people know about her, a private something, and it’s something that makes her heart swell when she realizes that he now knows that about her, too.

“Listen, Jug, I know my mother can be, um, demanding,” Betty says, and when he snorts at her word of choice, she figures it’s well deserved. “You don’t need to stay just to cater to whatever whim of the day she’s feeling.” Then softly, because she doesn’t particularly know how to have this conversation - “I know your two months or whatever are probably coming up.”

Jughead is quiet as he considers her, and the engine’s gentle rev seems all too loud now.

“I don’t really have anywhere else I need to be,” he says eventually, and against everything in her fighting to stay calm, her heart quickens anyhow. “And I like it here.”

“Book’s getting done?”

“Book’s getting done,” he agrees, flicking a glance over to her. “I could stay. Honestly, I was thinking about it, even before your mom brought it up.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not like anyone’s in desperate need of my motel room.”

“True,” Betty muses, holding up her hand against the wind - she’s always loved the pushback. “Or you could just stay with me.”

His head turns to hers before she’s even truly registered what she’s just said. “What?”

“What?”

“Really?”

Betty isn’t sure, because she hadn’t at all planned on this, but more than a part of her doesn’t wish her words back and wants instead for them to take root and bloom into whatever they care to. “I don’t mind,” she says, throwing in a shrug to downplay what now feels like much larger moment than she’d intended it to be.

He’s quiet again, fingers drumming idly against the wheel. “And you don’t think that would complicate anything?”

“It’s not anything different from what we’re doing now.”

“I guess not,” he says, voice firm when she expects it to sound faraway.

“I won’t be offended if you say no,” Betty adds to the lull. “You do what’s best for you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Betty repeats. “As in-”

“As in okay, I’ll bring the rest of my stuff over.”

“Just like that?”

“If you’re sure, then yeah, just like that.”

He’s looking at her then, a little nervous, a little bodly, and with something of a challenge in his eye. She doesn’t know what to do with that look of his - the one that’s cautious about what they’re doing and yet, still jumping blindly and at the consequence of the strange machinations of Alice Cooper, too.

She doesn’t know what to do with that look of his, and she doesn’t know what to do with the quick thump of her own heart, so she simply laughs. She’s happy right now in this moment, and she laughs because it’s the closest expression she can get to what she’s feeling.

And beside her, one hand drifting off the wheel in search of hers, he laughs, too.

 

* * *

 

She wakes to swirls of purple and orange.

It’s dusk out, she realizes as she blinks the light into her eyes. There’s a heavy arm drawn over her hip and steady breezes of warm air against her neck, and slowly as she shakes the murkiness from her mind, she happens on the fact that they’ve slept the entire day away.

Betty can’t remember the last time she’s done that, but there’s lightness in her bones and limber in her muscles - she figures she’d needed the rest.

Moving as gently as she can, she slides out from under the lazy hold he has on her. He’s a light sleeper, worlds lighter than she is, and as much as he claims he’s a night person and that staying up with her through her shifts is par for the course for him, she knows he’s tired.

She waves a hand over his face for good measure before creeping her way across the room to her desk and gingerly tugging open one of the drawers.

 _Write what you know,_ he’d said, and for better or worse; there’s one thing she knows well. _Here’s a blank page_ , he’d given her, and for whatever it’s worth, there are words on it that speak to that.

Unfolding the paper, Betty reads over the words there once before flipping open her computer to type them out.

“What’re you working on?”

Betty startles at the sound of his voice. “I woke you,” she says, twisting towards him and wincing when he flicks the light on. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he tells her easily as he sits up and props his pillow behind him. “I like watching you write. The column?”

Betty nods, crossing her legs and pulling her computer onto her lap. “I still have to write the body of it,” she explains. “And that’s all going to be Pop’s story. But I thought I should include some kind of explanation, you know? Something from me.”

His voice, when it floats to her, is barely louder than the wind rustling outside her window. “Read it to me,” he encourages softly.

Betty looks down at what she’s written, but there’s no need for her to. These are the words that have been in her heart for longer than she even knows, words that had sprung free with force and fire from her pen one quiet night in a diner while sitting across from him. They’re words she’s carried in wait for the right everything, the right time, place - the right person - and she knows them as well as she does anything else.

 _“These are the stories of a town, a small town, and the people who live in that town,”_ she begins, voice clear and steady as she brings her eyes to his. “ _The name of our town is Riverdale.”_

Across the room and with a warm light flooding over his face, looking at home in the bed she’s spent so many nights alone, he smiles at her words.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roses, amongst other things, symbolize love. Gladioli symbolize strength of character. Betty’s opening lines for her column are (of course) the first lines of Jug’s book in 'The River’s Edge', 1x01. The reference to “roses by any other and such,” is from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Act II, Scene II.
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> Will You Love Me Tomorrow - the Shirelles  
> Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - The Platters  
> Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks  
> Wildflowers - Tom Petty (but I’ve actually been listening to the version by - you guessed it - the Wailin’ Jennys for the female perspective!)  
> Mama Said - the Shirelles  
> Beautiful Dawn - the Wailin’ Jennys


	10. Primrose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to bugggghead for beating!

_I have seen no other who compares with you_

He’s stepping out of the bathroom, a towel loosely wrapped around his waist and his hair dripping little rounds of water onto the floor when he hears her pull into the driveway.

It’s such a comforting sound, Jughead thinks as he retreats to the bedroom in search of his clothes. In his excitement, he nearly forgets to open the drawer she’d cleared out for him only three-quarters of the way lest it fall out of its grooves and drop onto his foot again. Maybe it’s a little Pavlovian, too, but those sounds — the dying chug of her engine and the click of her car door slamming shut, the jingle of her keys seconds before they turn in the lock — all mean that she’s home and close enough for him to reach out to and hold.

And whether it’s at the crack of dawn or right before dinner, whether she’s bringing leftovers Pop had sent home with her for him or just her own tired self and feet he’ll later rub back to life, those sounds never fail to make him smile.

He grabs the first clean shirt his hand brushes over and dresses quickly, trying not to think too much about what that all means.

“Hey,” Jughead greets when she steps across the threshold, stopping briefly to duck behind the bathroom door to hang up his towel — he’s been making an effort to be tidy in her space.

“Hey!” Betty’s smiling face pokes out from behind her groceries. “Happy fourth!”

“I’ve always wondered about that,” he muses, dropping a quick kiss to her cheek before moving the paper bag from her arms to his.

“About what?”

“What you say to someone on the fourth. _Is_ it happy fourth?”

Betty shrugs, unearthing butter and little bags of flour from the paper bag. “Why not? It’s a day devoted entirely to John Hancock’s giant signature and eating and lazing — at least in practice, anyway. Why not be happy about it?”

“Happy fourth it is, then,” he says, sorting the milk and eggs to their rightful places before pausing on a red box and examining the little Pillsbury man smiling back at him. “Frozen pie crust?”

“Yeah. Why, what’s wrong with it? Is it open already?”

“No, it’s not that,” he answers quickly, drawing away the worry on her face. “I just thought you’d be the kind of person that does this from scratch.”

“I normally am,” Betty says easily. “I would’ve made it last night, but well, you know. You were there.”

Jughead smiles, maybe a little too wickedly and boyishly when he remembers all the ways in which he was. “I’m not sorry.”

“Good,” she says easily, twirling a peeler in her hand before bringing it down onto the apple’s skin. “I’m not either.”

He finishes his sorting, first loaf of bread into the breadbox and second into the freezer because frozen bread toasts better in the gospel of Betty, orange juice laid flat onto the shelf because he’s learned the hard way that this particular brand and it’s large packaging won’t fit into the door, and her saltines next to his animal crackers in the pantry. There’s a rhythm to the way he moves around her kitchen — sureness in his steps as he weaves behind and around her moving form reaching for the sugar and flour, an ease in his fingertips as he slides everything in its rightful place. It’s a dance he’s looked up and realized that he’s learned without meaning to, and like the inevitable smile that draws across his face when he hears her car in the driveway, it’s knowledge he doesn’t quite know how to wield.

“Need a hand?” Jughead offers. All this, he decides, is tomorrow’s problem.

Betty looks at him over her shoulder, skeptical. “You want to help?”

“I flipped a pancake. There’s nothing I can’t do.”

At that, her skepticism turns to amusement. “There’s a ruler in that drawer,” Betty says. “You can cut the strips for the lattice.”

He obliges, and as he reaches over her to wash off his hands, playfully flicking up the remnants at her face as he shakes them dry, Jughead thinks that he’s glad that he finally knows what that ruler is for.

“What am I doing here?” he asks staring down at the unfolded dough.

“Mark off every half inch or so and just cut them into strips,” she instructs. _“Straight_ ones.”

“I’m so glad you clarified because I was thinking of going for zig-zags. Maybe waves — apple pie is boring enough as it is.”

In the midst of meticulously rinsing off the apple she’s been working on under the running tap, Betty flicks water up at him in payment for his teasing, laughing lowly as he sputters in protest. As she’s reaching for a bowl, he tosses back a lump of dough in retaliation, smiling to himself as it lands squarely on her wrist just as he’d intended.

Then, it’s just quiet, save for the dull sounds of her peeler working its way around another apple, and his knife slowly carving its way down the dough, slightly warmed by its journey through the summer sun and his hands.

It’s quiet and comfortable. And it’s the safest he’s felt in recent memory.

He’s getting used to her, Jughead admits to himself — the quick kisses, the soft caresses she drops to his shoulder or his cheek, the weight of her presence filling the tangible space he’s so used to coexisting there next to him, keeping him company like an unseen, invisible friend.

He’s getting used to her, but he wonders as he covertly sneaks a glance at her bent over the kitchen sink, a long ribbon of unbroken apple peel weaving between her fingers, if there’s really anything so wrong with that.

 

* * *

The Coopers’ front door is red.

Jughead has never liked red. He’s been a dark and muted tones person all his life, and red is far too bold for his liking. There’s too much negativity associated with it, too. Red is the color of the ketchup he’d find himself sucking out of leftover packets when the bread went moldy and no one had bothered to replace it. It’s the color of bad grades circled on top of the page, seeping through to the back side, and it’s the color of his father’s blood on his hands, tinged with dark night and red light from the police car sitting in the distance.

He doesn’t want to place premonition on this day before it’s even begun, but there’s a sense of foreboding that comes from this large red door staring him down regardless, try as he might to shake off his edge.

Jughead figures that she feels him tense next to her; she bumps his elbow with hers, pie cradled within her arms like a precious thing. “They’re not that scary,” Betty tells him, and that he’s heard differently around town is a tidbit he keeps to himself.

And, so is the fact that his nervousness now probably means something.

He wants Betty’s parents to like him, even though he’s almost positive that Alice Cooper already doesn’t care for him, his big mouth, or his chosen mode of transportation. He wants them to think he’s more than some deadbeat breezing through town and corrupting their daughter, even though he hasn’t given anyone the indication he’s doing otherwise.

The red door swings open with deliberateness, and his first thought is that if the rest of the Cooper family is dressed the way Alice and Betty are, then he’s going to be sticking out like a sore thumb. He hadn’t thought much of it when Betty carefully tied a red bandana on top of her head and paired a white tank with a pair of Daisy Dukes — he’d pegged her as the festive type long ago — but he hadn’t prepared for Alice Cooper all decked out in red, white, and blue, either.

As it is, he’s in a pair of black jeans because his blue ones are in the laundry and a shirt with a hint of maroon piping along the plaid; that was about as red-adjacent as his scant wardrobe could get.

“Betty,” Alice greets, and Jughead can tell already that it’s going to be something of a disapproving comment, “are those shorts really appropriate for a woman your age?”

Betty shrugs easily. “I’m wearing them, so I guess they are.”

He feels a swell of pride at that answer. Directness goes a long way with Alice Cooper he’s coming to learn.

“Jughead,” Alice says, and it’s all she does.

“Mrs. Cooper.” Then for reasons completely unknown to him- “I cut the lattice. On the pie.” He wishes he could just shut up. “That was me. That’s why it looks like that.”

He wants to sigh — that wasn’t direct at all.

“I figured,” Alice says coolly, and he doesn’t know if he should take the statement as praise of Betty’s pie baking skills or censure of his own.

He doesn’t ponder it much, though, because Alice steps aside in wordless invitation for him to enter.

 

* * *

 

“See?” Betty says as he helps her rearrange the dozen-plus pies on the kitchen island to make room for her own. “I told you that you didn’t have to worry about the lattice.”

He’d figured she’d just been exaggerating when she’d said that _‘literally everyone brings a pie, no one’s going to notice,’_ when he’d nearly tossed the knife at the opposite wall when the strips just wouldn’t cut straight.

“So what happens to all these?”

“Freezer, fridge. Mr. Andrews always gets a few, the cherry ones. I take mine home.”

“Aren’t you not supposed to do that?”

Betty shrugs, and for someone so adamant about minding her manners, she seems especially unfazed by his incredulity. “Why not? It’s a good pie.”

“And clearly, its baker is incredibly humble, too.”

Betty smiles at that before looking around, first to the backyard, then towards the living room and front door.

“Tour of the house?” she suggests. “Not that there’s much to see.”

Jughead thinks she’s offering mostly for his benefit. He doesn’t doubt that she’s sincere in wanting to show him around her childhood home, but it’s more so to ease him into the onslaught of Coopers waiting for him in the backyard than it is to show him the living room she used to watch movies in with her family.

But as mundane as it all is to her, it’s not to him.

He’s never really been in a home like this before. No one in his past, least of all him, has ever lived like this — in a home with stairs, and with separate places to eat breakfast and dinner. The people he’s known in his life have never been able to, and likely will never be able to have their own backyards, let alone a front one. They’ve dreamed, sure, but it’s never been close to a reality.

This place is a different kind of world and home, the likes of which he’s never seen before.

But beyond that, this house and these little nooks and crannies are the places that shaped and molded the woman in front of him. Within these four walls, she became Betty Cooper.

And that, he’s very interested in seeing.

“Lead the way,” Jughead says.

He listens carefully as she speaks, jotting down in his mind the things she stops to point out to him.

“Dining room,” Betty tells him, before looking around quickly and kneeling down beneath the table. “Look,” she whispers, pointing up at a roughly carved ‘ _BC’_ on the underside of the table. “My mom still doesn’t know. At least I don’t think she does.”

Jughead carefully traces the pattern of her initials, wanting to remember the feel of the letters under his fingertip.

“My grandfather carved these,” Betty says as she sits down on the fifth step and runs her hands over the baluster lining the stairs. “I drew on them once — just crayons, nothing major. Still, I think my dad nearly disowned me.”

“I hear Magic Erasers work wonders.”

At that, Betty turns a knowing look his way. “Speaking from experience?”

“I used to draw on the trailer’s floors.”

“Ah, so you were a nightmare child.”

Jughead shrugs. “In another life, I would’ve been a starving artist instead of a starving writer.”

And some of the things she shows him, he already knows about, at least a little. There’s the edge of the wall that juts out in between the kitchen and the living room that she’d run into at age five in an overwhelming rush to get to the dinner table; it’s faint, but when the light hits it just right, there’s still the ghost of a scar carved into her left eyebrow. There’s a dollhouse tucked away in a basement corner, her very favorite toy, and the one that she’d told him one night like she was revealing some great secret, was the only thing she ever truly bonded with Polly over. There’s the back door that she’d slammed so hard in Archie’s face once that a hinge had fallen straight off, all because Archie wouldn’t share his Sour Patch Kids with her.

At the door to her room, Betty pauses, hand on the doorknob; it’s the place he’s most eager to see. “It’s, um — pink,” she says as her cheeks turn the same shade.

Jughead smiles. “Consider me warned.”

“It’s really pink.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t personally sign off on all this pink. Some of it was my mom. She appreciates color coordination way more than I do.”

“Betty,” he interrupts, laying a reassuring hand over hers on the knob, “just show me.”

His first thought when she pushes open her door is that _‘it’s pink’_ is something of an understatement.

Absolutely _everything_ is pink.

The walls are pink, which he’d expected as much. But so are the curtains and the carpet, and the little throw pillows on the bench sitting at the foot of her bed, an article of furniture he identifies immediately as the place she’d likely once thrown laundry not quite ready for the hamper, but dirty enough to not go back in with her truly clean, folded clothes.

She has that chair now, an upright yellow dining chair tucked away in the corner of her bedroom that he’s begun slinging his jeans over; he figures she would’ve had it back then, too.

But as pink as everything is, the room is also all supremely Betty — he can see and feel her in it, the memory of who she once was and the person she is now thrums within the walls like an ever-present spirit.

There are pictures everywhere, a handful of them framed, even more simply tucked into the corners of her mirrors and taped onto the inside of her closet door, the places in her room she’d spend the most time at. There are some of her family, a photo of the four of them smiling that he’s sure must’ve been a Christmas card one year signed _‘love, the Coopers,’_ and a few of her and Polly at various stages of childhood and tweendom, delicate little flowers woven into the braids in their hair.

They looked more alike as kids than they do now, Jughead notes as he looks through the pictures.

By far the most featured person is Archie, and that Archie of the now white and perfect smile used to have a pronounced gap between his two front buck teeth at age seven or eight draws out a large laugh from him.

“He grew into them,” Betty comments fondly, maybe even a little wistfully. She’s sitting on the bed with one leg tucked under her when he looks up from the photo, he’s thrown back in time for a moment when he sees her framed within the mementos of her past, bright-eyed and hopeful, full of wonder.

Or maybe, he thinks as he sits down beside her, smiling at the pink rosebuds on her bedspread, it isn’t Betty of the past he’s seeing, but simply Betty as she is now.

“What do you think?” she asks, sending a cursory glance around her room.

“It’s pink.”

“That it is.”

“But it’s also-” Jughead trails off, following her lead and taking in the room in full. It’s a little messy, but in Betty’s own way — posters and pictures of flowers tilt and overlap each other, as though she couldn’t decide what most deserved the forefront when hanging them up. It’s eclectic in a way; the furniture matches in color but not quite in style. And, there’s a lamp that looks like a bouquet of tulips he finds both very ugly and yet, still oddly endearing. It’s warm and it quite literally radiates love — there are at least five different posters he can count proudly bearing the word, and four large metal letters spelling it out on the wall near her window.

He loves that. He loves all of it — the organized mess, the eccentric lamp, the totems of love she has scattered around the space.

“It’s you,” he answers simply. “This room feels just like you. I don’t really know how else to describe it.”

Betty smiles widely at his answer. He hadn’t known until then how she’d really felt about her room — it reminds him a lot of her house and the way she keeps it — but he doesn’t know what memories, good or bad, this place holds for her.

But now, with her shoulders relaxed and her cheeks faintly flushed with pride, he knows that this place is one she loves.

He always loses himself a little when she blushes like that.

Jughead throws a quick glance back towards her door before bringing his hand to her cheek and turning her face to his. He hasn’t been kissing her long, but already, he’s learned a lot about the way she does, and about the way he does, too. There’s the feel of her lips when she’s going in for a quick kiss, barely puckered, and just a soft, whispering brush against his. Those, he’s come to learn, normally happen before she’s about to leave for her shift at Pop’s or before she turns away from him in bed. He likes holding her, and he thinks she likes it, too, but they’re both side-sleepers that flip often.

Then, there’s the feel of her when she’s looking to get lost in him. In those moments, she melts into him. Betty is so sure of herself — she knows who she is and what she wants, and she knows what’s expected of her, but in those moments, she lets him take over. She’ll curl against him, just slightly, and it’ll be all the indication he needs to run his thumb along the line of her jaw and tip her face to his. He’ll press his hand into her lower back, firmly to let her know he’s right there, and sometimes, she’ll sigh. Sometimes, he’ll feel the curve of her smile against his lips.

This kiss is the latter. But it’s okay, Jughead thinks. There’s so much in her life she controls and takes charge of. It’s a privilege to be the one she lets in to fight when she’s too tired, and to pick up the pieces when she doesn’t want to. There are few people in her life, a handful at most, she allows to do that.

“I’ve never kissed anyone in this bed before,” Betty admits when he pulls away. He feels the heat of her words fall against his lips. “Or this room.”

“Ever?”

Her answering smile is shy. “Just you.”

At her confirmation, Jughead feels a burst of something bloom in his heart, maybe pride and satisfaction, maybe a hint of responsibility. He remembers the first kiss he’d gotten in his foldable cot of a bed — Dilly Dalton who’d lived in the trailer next to his and who’d at age ten wanted to know what a kiss felt like. He’d been eight, but he’d wanted to know, too.

 _Wet_ , he’d concluded. _Not fun, definitely not something to chuck away one’s whole family for, and highly impersonal._

But he doesn’t want it to be that for her, he thinks as he dips his head back down, moving his mouth slowly, languidly over hers. Wet may be inevitable, but he hopes that this is fun for her, and that the time they’re spending together is personal for her, and that maybe it’s even the most special thing there is.

Because it is for him, he’s coming to realize — it’s special and fun and every wonderful thing in between. And, there’s something so thrilling in hoping that it might be for her, too.

 

* * *

__

He returns to the barbeque and the clan of blonde Coopers a little out of breath but with a whole lot more confidence than he’d had before. And for the most part, all the fears he’d had going into the day are mostly unfounded. There are eyes following him as he builds his burger and side stares directed his way as he crosses the backyard and takes his place next to Betty on the garden wall, and one too many questions about whether the name Jughead is Polish or Swedish or Greek. But he’d expected that.

And when Betty takes his plate and scrapes off the mound of guacamole he beyond regrets helping himself to right into the row of plants behind them, he thinks that it’s all even worth it.

“How’re you holding up?” Betty asks, and when she looks up at him from picking the sesame seeds off her burger bun, he thinks she looks slightly nervous.

He wonders if it’s from asking him that question or from him mingling with her family.

“Fine,” Jughead says honestly, nodding down towards his burger. “Great, even. I’m very sufficiently occupied.”

At that, she rolls her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re having a mediocre level of fun and not anything more.”

“Hey,” he says seriously, drawing her attention. “Thank you.”

Jughead draws in a breath, the things he really wants to say to her hanging on at the back of his throat. He’s thankful that she’s stood at his side in front of her family, unembarrassed and unafraid to introduce him as _‘my friend, Jughead,’_ to her great uncle and her aunt, and all her very blonde cousins even as they’d all looked at her with pity and confusion that she hadn’t said something more like _‘boyfriend’._

He’d been anxious in the lead up to this day, and he realizes now as he looks around at her family, traditional in every sense of the word, that dealing with the looks and the stares and all the behind-the-back gossip is probably not easy for her either. She could’ve asked him to play along and wear the mantle of a relationship just for the day and she could’ve kept him from her family, but she hadn’t. She’d let him into her world while still respecting his boundaries.

And for that, he’s more than thankful.

“For letting me tag along today,” he says eventually as a ring of heat grows around his collar; for once, he doesn’t know how to make the words come out. “I usually spend this day alone. It’s nice to not.”

Betty smiles and bumps her shoulder against his, and he figures that’s her reply.

“So what would you normally do with all that alone time?” she asks, rolling a grape under her forefinger before popping it into her mouth.

Jughead shrugs. “Nothing, really. Work, I guess.”

“No family, no friends?”

“My sister visited me the year that I was, um — away,” he says, surprising himself at his own blunt honesty; his past is something he’s accepted that he can’t change about himself, but it still isn’t a conversation topic he returns to with much willingness. “But she has her own life and her friends; my mother has hers. And I haven’t intersected with any of that for a while now. I don’t really like spending this day getting mind-numbingly drunk and I’m not a twenty-one year old coed. Nor do I think it’s appropriate for me to hang around twenty-one year old coeds.”

“Where is she now, by the way?”

“Amsterdam, I think.”

Betty snorts. “Tell her to enjoy the brownies.”

“She’s more of a pure grass kind of girl but I’ll pass the general sentiment along.”

Betty laughs lowly to herself, rolling another grape. “I’m glad you’re here, Jug,” she says earnestly. “It’s nice not spending this day alone.”

“What’re you talking about? Your whole family’s here.”

Betty nods slowly in understanding, but he can tell it’s not quite in agreement with him. “The other type of alone,” she offers simply.

He lets the weight of her words skin in and allows himself a moment to revel in the fact that even while in a sea of her entire family, it’s his company above everyone else’s that’s keeping her loneliness at bay. “Being alone is overrated,” he hears himself saying.

The corners of her mouth tug up. “Is that so, wanderer?”

There’s no use walking back that statement, especially when he thinks it’s true. “I think it can be.”

“Oh yeah?” she challenges, voice teasing.

“Yeah,” he agrees, biting into his burger in an effort to maintain his cool.

“Jughead.”

At the voice, he stands so abruptly that the beer bottle at his side rolls and rattles dangerously on the wall’s edge.

“Sir,” he says, swallowing quickly. “Hal. I mean, Mr. Sir-”

“Hal,” Betty’s father reminds him, and somewhere in the back of his mind, amidst his sweaty palms and shaking hand, Jughead remembers the older man telling him that formalities weren’t necessary.

“Hal,” Jughead corrects, sucking in a steadying breath.

“Having fun?”

“The food’s great,” he blurts out. _Why is he shouting?_ “The guac especially.” _Why is he lying?_

“Good,” Hal says. “Good! Help me get the beers from the garage fridge? We’re running low out here.”

In his peripheries, he sees Betty’s face harden. “Dad, no.”

“I have two hands and far more beers than that, Betty.”

“Okay,” she says gamely, setting aside her plate on the garden wall and brushing down the back of her dress as she stands. “I’ll help, too.”

“No need,” her father tells her, an edge rounding his voice, and it’s in that moment Jughead realizes that the herculean task of beer restocking is less about beverages for guests and more about Hal having a private chat with just him — man-to-man.

“Betty, it’s fine,” Jughead hears himself saying, even though he can feel his palms begin to clam up again. Never in his life have his hands produced this much moisture. “Really.”

He doesn’t think Betty looks entirely confident in him, but he follows Hal and his stocky build into the house regardless.

“Did Betty show you around?” Hal asks, and Jughead is grateful that it’s more in the ‘I hope my daughter made you feel welcome here’, and less in the ‘I know what you did with her in her very pink bedroom’ kind of way.

“She did,” Jughead confirms quickly, lest he get Betty into it with Alice; Hal Cooper seems like the type to report everything back to his wife.

Or rather, the type that has his brain picked mercilessly by his wife whether he likes it or not.

“You have a beautiful home,” Jughead adds.

And he truly means it, he thinks as he comes to a stop at the mantle, unable to hold back from stopping and examining a picture of Betty sitting in — not on — a toilet, legs dangling over the side uncomfortably as she frowns in the very same way she still does.

He bets she hates this picture and he’s absolutely sure she hates that it’s front and center on her for all to see.

As for him, though, he loves it.

“Sorry,” Jughead says, putting down the picture abruptly when he feels the heavy weight of Hal staring at him.

When Hal moves closer to the mantle, there’s a very strong part of him that battles the desire to step three paces back. “They’re meant to be looked at,” Hal says easily.

He doesn’t know if he can or should take Hal’s words at face value, but his curiosity gets the better of him. He hadn’t expected people like Betty’s parents to put such a clearly embarrassingly picture of their daughter right up on the mantle like that — they’re so proper. They wear polos and pastels, and he thinks they might even be the kinds of people that iron their jeans if they even own them.

He thinks that might say something about them — that there are memories, despite how they look to others on the mantle, that are worth going up there and holding onto because of how wonderful they are, and that there’s more to their primness and properness than meets the eye.

There’s a handful of flowers in a blue mason jar at the center, delicate yellow petals blooming forth from a bright center, and that Betty has a similar arrangement on her own mantle is no accident, he thinks; she’s still her mother’s daughter, as different as they may be. Then, there are the predictable pictures of Polly and Betty, and the ones he hadn’t expected — AJ sitting on top of the roof of the car and smiling widely in a pair of overalls, and a familiar one, the one of AJ and Betty at the wildflower field.

“I love this one,” Jughead says before he can stop himself.

He’s standing very near one of the Coopers’ air vents so there’s no way he can blame that for the redness that he’s sure rises to his face when Hal tucks his hands into his pockets and looks right at him.

“What is it you want out of life, Jughead? If you don’t mind my asking.”

The first thing he thinks is that he minds.

He doesn’t like answering questions he doesn’t have good answers to.

The second thing he thinks of is Betty’s dining table and its mismatched chairs. Even here, he can so clearly picture the little nicks and grooves he runs his fingers over as he languidly sips coffee and glances through the news in the morning. He thinks of her closet and her bookshelf and how everything belongs in its very own place. He thinks of her floral mugs and the knife with the twisted handle that’d accidentally fallen to the bottom of the dishwasher but that’s still perfectly usable, of how the mantle he’s standing in front of now differs from Betty’s. Hers is uneven in shade, the right side is lighter than the left, a uniqueness borne from the way the sun falls against it every morning.

“A home,” Jughead says eventually and completely honestly. “I think.”

_Is that so, wanderer?_

He supposes it is.

There’s a beat before Hal replies. “And what is that to you?”

Jughead feels his eyes narrow at the question that he’s not quite sure he’s understanding. But in the space he leaves for clarification, the older man never does.

“Somewhere to go at the end of the day,” he says, clearing his throat as he offers his answer. “The place with your bed and your things — the same somewhere, one that doesn’t move and stays right where it is.” He brushes his fingertips over the yellow petals, a whisper of a caress he’s proud he’s come to perfect in the past few weeks.

_Somewhere with flowers on the mantle, surrounded by pictures from a time long gone, somewhere warm and somewhere safe._

_Somewhere he wants to be and somewhere that wants him to be there._

“Somewhere like this, I guess,” he says, holding both palms upturned in the space around him.

He feels, plainly put, incredibly uncomfortable as Hal Cooper stares him down. He’s dealt with men twice Hal’s weight and all of it muscle before, and he’s learned how to talk and savvy his way around them. They’d been intimidating and they’d been frightening, but he doesn’t know that they’d quite unnerved him the way this unassuming polo-wearing man is doing now.

The right answer, he realizes now as the acute awareness that this is Betty’s own father he’s talking to hits him, was probably something more along the lines of _‘your daughter, in a white dress walking towards me.’_ Fleetingly, he finds himself hoping that Hal doesn’t kick him out of the house for not giving that answer.

It’s an irrational thought since he knows he hasn’t done anything all that terrible, save for the fact that he’s been terribly awkward, but it still fills him with a sense of dread just the same.

“I’m sure you’ll get there,” Hal tells him eventually, kindly, and there’s a moment that Jughead thinks he’s misunderstanding him. “One way or another.”

Jughead looks again to the flowers on the mantle as he exhales his relief and fights the sudden urge to pluck one off to bring back to Betty; she loves them so.

 _Primroses_ , he recalls as he tucks his hand into his pocket — these aren’t his flowers to pick. He’d asked her what they were when she’d set her own bunch on the dining table a week or so ago with a soft smile across her face he was sure she didn’t even know she wore.

 _“I like their symmetry,”_ she’d told him when he’d asked her why those of all the flowers she could’ve chosen.

 _“You, Betty of all things neat and tidy, dishes cleaned with half a bottle of soap, would,”_ he’d teased back.

_“I’ll thank you not to wear out my royal name.”_

And somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders even if he does get to that place one day, a home of his own with flowers on the mantle, if he’ll ever be able to associate these flowers — any flowers — their sweetness and their liveliness, their color and their vivacity, with anything or anyone other than her.

He doesn’t think he wants to.

“I hope so,” Jughead says, and even he hears the thing that sounds like longing in his own voice.

 

* * *

 

When the sun begins its descent towards the horizon, they head to Sweetwater River.

“The bonfire, remember?” Betty tells him gently, and even though she’s told him upwards of umpteenth times he still needs the reminder.

In his defense, it’s been a long day of remembering cousins of cousins of cousins’ names.

The scene at Sweetwater River is more like what he’d pictured when he’d tried to square in his mind the concept of Betty and the Fourth of July. There’s a closeness that comes even before they wind their way down towards the water, a sense of trust and safety — they’re parked behind Moose’s truck and he notices that the door’s been left open.

He doesn’t feel the need to close it.

There’s a fire going near the rocky ridge of the river’s edge. He supposes that it snaps and crackles the way all bonfires do but as it is, he can’t hear it over the sounds of the night. There’s laughter, more of it than he’d thought there’d be, rising over the quick bursts of caps toppling off beer bottles and the sweet, low sounds of a guitar adding a beat and rhythm to it all. On the water, he can see the fire’s reflection wriggling and swaying, and floating above it there’s an uneven path of smoke tracing its way into the night sky. There’s something warm about it, something welcoming, and all together he thinks that this fits much better with his conception of how Betty would like to spend this day.

“There’s Polly,” she says, untangling her hand from his and catching her sister’s eye with a wide wave. He follows suit a little less enthusiastically and finds himself wondering if the Blossoms’ Fourth of July party had been better or worse than the Coopers’. He doesn’t see Jason anywhere, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers Betty’s offhand comment about how there’s yet to be a year that Jason doesn’t enjoy this holiday a little more than he really should.

The Blossoms’ party may have a slight edge on the Coopers’, he concludes.

But then again, he had something to prove at his.

“Be right back,” Betty tells him.

It doesn’t escape him that she trails off towards her patriotically dressed family without asking him if he’ll be okay entertaining himself for a moment or two. She’s been checking in with him all day, almost like she’d been sure there’d be one thing that would push him too far over the edge and send him sprinting for the hills — whether it was her pink room, or her mother’s festive outfit, or her aunt’s gentle insistence that Betty not be inspired by Polly and have her own aura cleansing ceremony at their wedding, by the way, when would that be so she could make sure her very empty schedule would be free? But even if there is that thing that would send him backpedaling with trepidation, and he’s not sure that there is, Betty seems to think that he’s not going to find it here.

And he thinks she’s right. He sees Moose and Midge sitting near Archie, heads resting against each other, Kevin bouncing their baby on his knee, one he thinks is a little on the large and rotund side of things even when taking into account chubby baby cheeks and the like, and Archie strumming a guitar balanced across his lap. There’s a camaraderie that flows between them, unspoken, as if within the vibrations of the chords and notes Archie picks, but it’s one he doesn’t feel like he’s breaking when he scoots into an open space in the circle.

“If all you can play is four chords and _Wonderwall_ , I’m leaving,” he says by way of greeting.

“I can play five, so you can stay.”

“No Veronica tonight?” Jughead asks when the lack of an overdressed presence hits him.

“Nah,” Archie says easily, shaking his head. “She hates the smell of all this smoke. And she said she was tired.”

He supposes that the transition from updating one’s lifestyle blog and taking pictures of flower arrangements to full-time employment can do that to a person, but he’s wise enough to keep his mouth shut about it. He’s not really in a position to judge, anyway — if the muse hits him at three in the morning instead of three in the afternoon, then that’s when he’ll be working.

“You had fun today,” Archie continues, and it’s not a question.

“And you know this because?”

“Because my dad lives next to the Coopers?”

He’d forgotten about that.

“I was out back grilling,” Archie explains.

“Didn’t see you.”

“Oh, I know. I waved. I sent smoke signals. I flicked a bottle cap at the back of your head — nothing.” He’d thought it’d just been a particularly heavy leaf that’d hit him. “Seriously, I know Betty’s interesting but she’s not _that_ interesting. You can look away from her mouth every now and then; it’ll still be there when you look back. The rest of her will be, too.”

In his left ear, he hears someone huff out something between a suppressed laugh and a snort. Maybe Kevin, maybe Midge.

“I was being a good listener,” he defends. His cheeks heat, but he doesn’t really mind the ribbing — he figures it’s part and parcel of doing whatever it is he’s doing with Betty.

“Sure. By the way, you can still blink when you’re being a good listener.”

“I’ll make a note.”

“Here, Jug,” he hears Moose say, and he doesn’t know how good a job he does of holding back his surprise when he sees the beer that’s being held out to him. He’s been afraid of guys who look like Moose before — in grade school when they’d throw their hefty shoulders into his while walking down the hall, in prison where he’d get a good sock to the face if he’d so much as looked at them in the wrong way. He has height but he’s never had muscle, and the guys that have looked like Moose in his past have always exploited and used that to their advantage.

It takes a moment to adjust to Moose’s affable face now and to the idea that the bigger man doesn’t want to take the beer bottle and crack it over the side of his head.

“Thanks,” Jughead says, nodding as he accepts the bottle.

The condensation is cool under his fingertips.

 

* * *

 

Betty sidles up next to him without warning and the feel of her just barely pressed against him seems far weightier than it actually is. He falls quiet as a genuine smile blooms on her face when she turns dutifully to Kevin, then Moose and Midge, then Archie and asks them how they’ve all been. He only realizes it when she inadvertently brings it up, how much time he’s been spending with her — time that she might’ve once spent grabbing coffee with Midge or Kevin has been his and his alone these past few weeks.

So he laughs when it’s called for, and he throws in a comment here and there to let her know that he’s listening, to let them all know that he cares what they have to say, but other than that, he lets her have her time with her friends. Instead, he focuses on the way her arm feels against his, slightly sticky from the bug spray she’d slathered all over herself and muscles loose and relaxed in a way they hadn’t been earlier at her childhood home.

He’s tracing the outline of the trees against the backdrop of the night, head slightly nodding along with the ridges and curves his eyes track when Betty stands suddenly, sending a breeze of cool air his way as she does.

Jughead turns up to ask what she’s up to, but she beats him to it. “The smoke’s making my eyes water,” she explains almost apologetically. “Walk with me for a bit?”

At the invitation, he stands too, grateful for a moment alone with her without far too many wandering gazes drifting over and landing on them. “Sure.” He says it as easily as he can, but it’s still followed by a low whistle from Archie and a smile from Midge that he thinks might break her face. But even when Betty hooks one of her fingers around his as they amble down towards the river’s edge, the barest of touches but more than enough for everyone to talk about in their absence, he thinks that there’s something strangely exciting in the spectacle of it all. Betty’s a serious person and so is he — it’s why he thinks they get along as well as they do. He takes her as seriously as he does himself, and she does the same. It’s one of the things he appreciates about her and one of the many things he respects.

It’s nice, he realizes as he curls the rest of his fingers around hers, that they have people around them who don’t, or at the very least, who aren’t afraid to remind them that they’re not cut so far above the rest. They’re no different, and they’ll get the same whistles and laughs and grins that Midge and Moose and Archie and Veronica had gotten, too, when they’d once been the talk of the town. He imagines that had he ever had a high school romance or a college one, or really, any kind of romance that hadn’t also been wrapped up in crime and violence, it’d have been something like this. Something that feels a little youthful and playful; something that feels so consuming and yet, so exceedingly normal.

Betty stops when they’re far enough away that the high sounds of laughter and chatter become nothing more than low rumbles and whispers. He watches as she crouches low, hands deftly fluttering over the rocks around her, before standing again. It happens quickly, so much so that he doesn’t connect two and two at first — beyond them, the smooth surface of the water cracks and breaks, rippling out as something skips and hops over the surface.

“I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” he says a little dumbly when she reaches down for another rock.

“I didn’t know I still remembered how to.”

Jughead watches as she skips a few more, watching her head nod in time with the stones as they touch down against the water. She never makes it past three but he doesn’t think she really cares. He can’t see much of her in this darkness but he doesn’t need to; right now, she’s just happy to be a part of the world — he can feel it radiating from her.

“I have a theory about you,” he says as he hands her a stone, flat across the top and smooth around the edges.

“Oh?”

“You don’t hate Riverdale as much as you think you do.”

Jughead hears the sharp ripple of the stone bouncing on the surface of the water before splashing and sinking down. “I don’t hate Riverdale,” Betty says.

“Don’t you?”

“Of course not.” He holds the silence he knows that she’s expecting him to fill; she’ll be too curious not to press him. “What makes you think I don’t hate it as much as _you_ think I do?”

Jughead grins at his accuracy. “As much as you _project_ that you do.”

“One of these days, I’m going to take a dictionary and thump you over the head with it.”

“Because that’ll make all the words that annoy you fall out of it?”

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” Betty quips, and when she smiles, widely and brightly, he thinks that it’s a near perfect match for the sliver of crescent moon hanging overhead.

“The pictures at your parents house,” Jughead says eventually.

“What about them?”

“You look happy in them,” he says. “All of them — at Pop’s, at the wildflower field, rolling in the mud and bearing an uncanny resemblance to a pig having the time of its life at the county-”

_“Hey!”_

Jughead laughs at her indignance and without really registering what he’s doing, presses a kiss to her temple in an unspoken effort to convey how lovely he thinks she truly is.

“You look happy in them,” he repeats. “You look — I don’t know — you look free. You look like exactly who I know you to be.”

“They’re just pictures,” Betty says, not unkindly but firmly. “It’s easy to capture a moment in time that looks the way you want it to look. See?” she says, pinning a sweet smile across her face. “Click — picture perfect. But that’s just a moment. There are a million and one others that look monumentally different than this.”

“Sure they do,” he agrees. “But even after that moment, there are still a thousand and one words that remain.”

“And what are they saying?”

“That this place means more to you than you let on.”

“I don’t hate Riverdale, Jug,” she says, folding the stone he holds out to her within her grasp. “I don’t have some sort of great love for it, but I don’t hate it. It’s a place I live. It’s a place in the middle of nowhere. But it’s a place just like any other. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

“I do. Trust me, no one gets that more than I do. But I still think that all this,” he says, and with one hand on her shoulder and one under her chin, he turns her away from him and tips her head up towards the world sprawling out in front of them, quiet in its nightly solitude. “All this means more than that to you than that.”

He isn’t worried that he’s offended her when a sigh floats over his way; he knows what that sigh sounds like by now. This one tells him that she doesn’t really believe him. “That’s a nice idea,” Betty says eventually.

He wishes he had the right words to tell her what he means. It’s more than just happiness, he wants to say — it’s that in those pictures, she looks as much a part of the world as a person could ever be. She blends into it and embodies it; she brightens it, and in turn, it brightens her. She belongs to it as much as it belongs to her — she’s the moon pushing and pulling the waves and she’s the sun drawing spring’s blooms from the red earth. There’s Betty and there’s Riverdale, and he’s not completely sure that one exists without the other.

But he’s sure that she won’t understand what he really means by that if he dares to tell her.

“Oh my god,” Betty says loudly and suddenly, eyes wide as she looks back over to him. He starts a little at the noise, not having expected it. “We don’t have fireworks here. They’re in Centerville.”

He’s amused that’s where her revelation led her. “I’m not broken up about it.”

“No?”

Jughead shrugs. “Why would I be?”

“I figured you’d be used to having them.”

“I am,” he agrees. “But it doesn’t mean that I mind they’re not here.” Jughead can tell that she doesn’t quite believe him, or at the very least, that he’s placating her. “I’m okay with the fact that Riverdale doesn’t send up things that go boom on this particular night, Betty. I don’t miss them.”

“I pictured you as the kind of guy that loves them,” she admits, almost shyly. “I don’t know why.”

“I don’t really have an opinion on them,” he offers honestly. “They’ve always been there, but they just as easily could’ve not been.”

“I don’t like them,” Betty says.

“Yeah?”

Betty shakes her head, and the night around them is so still that even that movement is enough to shake and startle it.

“Too loud.” Jughead smiles to himself when he notes that his mind already knew that, long before she’d said a word.

“You know, you don’t have to apologize for all that Riverdale is or isn’t,” he tells her gently. “It isn’t your job to make this place the most perfect one there is. I like it just the same.”

She’s quiet then, and the world is, too, waiting just like him for what she might have to say to that.

“I have a theory about you,” Betty says eventually as she sends the rock in her hand out towards the water. _Three_ , he counts as it draws down below the surface.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I think you love Riverdale more than you think you do.”

Jughead looks at her, turning himself fully towards her and waiting for her to do the same. She does eventually, when the ripples of the water completely still and turn smooth and clear again, like glass with the night captured within it. He’s made her squirm under his gaze before — in the mornings when he wakes before her and watches her sleep, all the worry wiped clean from the planes of her face, across the couch with her knee tucked under her chin and her teeth chewing on her thumb as she reaches a particularly interesting part of whatever she’s reading, when she’s washing dishes and humming to herself, swirling them clockwise four times under the water before setting them out to dry. When she catches him, she’ll tell him what she always does — _I can feel you looking, Jug, and it’s disconcerting. You stare too intently._

He knows he’s doing it now and he knows she knows it, too. But, he finds, it’s one of those rare moments that he can’t quite help, moments that he’ll admit have grown less rare since he’s come to know her. There’s something arresting about having nothing but nature and night wrap around her like this, a cape made from the moon and stars keeping her warm, constellations dotting and decorating her skin. She is Riverdale, he thinks, because she is the very definition of this place — warm and eternally real, and made from only the truest stuff and soil the world has to offer.

If he loves Riverdale, it’s because of her.

“Maybe I do,” Jughead says quietly, and when he does, he thinks about how smoothly his voice blends in with the symphony of the night, like it’s always been a part of it and like it always would be.

 

* * *

 

Back near the bonfire and sitting on ground that still feels warm from the sun that’s set long ago, there are people dancing and there’s a small child running towards them with energy that puts him a little on edge.

“I thought you’d left!” the kid says, plopping down next to Betty — _Juniper_ , he reminds himself.

“Have I ever left without saying goodbye to you?” Betty’s voice turns sweet, but never patronizing and he realizes as he watches the scene unfold that this is not unlike what she’d look like as a mother — kind and gentle, something of a natural; she has one of those personalities that just gets along with kids without much effort.

“Oh, hi,” Juniper says, looking up at him like she hadn’t seen him there, and he has half a mind to think that in her singular focus, she really hadn’t. All of him heats when he snaps out of his train of thought. He blames the bonfire. “You’re Cuphead, right?”

“Jughead,” he corrects gently.

“Do you live in Riverdale now?”

He’s about to answer with something cryptic when Betty beats him to the punch. “Did mom ask you to ask that?” Betty asks, voice turned light for her audience but not without curiosity.

“No, she asked me to ask if Cup- Jughead is your boyfriend.”

Betty snorts, but in a way that even he can tell is directed entirely at Polly.

“She thinks he is,” Juniper forges ahead, turning now to him. “Can you be _my_ boyfriend?”

He keeps his face as steady as he can, holding back a laugh at the kid-logic or rather the lack thereof. “How can I be your boyfriend if I’m already your Aunt Betty’s?”

Jughead watches as the kid considers the question for a moment before shrugging it off. “Do you want to dance?” Juniper asks, voice bright. “Aunt Betty can share you with me.”

He tips his head towards Betty. “Did you ask her that?”

“Oh, he’s all yours,” Betty says. Her returning smile is wide, almost challenging.

“Lesson one,” he says, standing and rising to it — kids he has no problem dealing with, and especially ones that walk and talk like his sister, although he’s not sure that Betty knows that given the surprise on her face. He walks the kid a little nearer to where everyone else is, smiling at the toothy grin that breaks across her face when she realizes that he’s being completely serious.

“When you’re older, don’t share boyfriends,” Jughead advises. “Unless you grow up to be into that sort of thing.” Which, he thinks, given who Juniper’s parents are, she very well might be.

“What sort of thing?”

“Ask your mom later. She seems to be in the know about a lot.”

He watches as Juniper looks around, anxiety rising on her little face at what he thinks is the realization that she’s not at all like the handful of other women out there dancing — she’s about half their size and twenty years younger.

“Jump on,” Jughead says, pointing down to his feet and holding his hands low for Juniper to take. “It’s okay,” he adds when she looks up at him with apprehension. “I know what I’m doing.”

It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s also not a complete lie.

He isn’t able to move much with the two twin weights of Juniper’s feet on his, but he’s able to sway and swing them enough that she doesn’t complain. She looks happy even, wearing that special brand of glee that he’s only ever seen on children who haven’t needed to learn the necessity of masking and hiding emotions yet, and who only know how to express exactly what they’re feeling on their faces.

“Are you really Aunt Betty’s boyfriend?” Juniper asks bluntly. “I won’t tell.”

“That,” he starts, treading carefully, “is something that remains to be seen.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it’s not just up to me.”

“Do you want to be Aunt Betty’s boyfriend?”

“Do you know you ask a lot of questions?” he answers back, keeping his tone light in case his teasing fails to translate.

“I know,” Juniper says easily. “Dad tells me that a lot.”

“Well, at least you’re aware.”

He’s vaguely aware of Juniper launching into a long-winded ramble of all the other exasperating things her dad tells her a lot as he looks back over to Betty, swinging his eyes up towards the trees, the stars, the moon in an effort to make it all look a little less obvious. But every time he does, there’s that same look waiting for him painted so plainly on her face. He doesn’t have a name for it, nor does he think he’s quite seen this mix of emotion on her before. There’s surprise there, amusement, and that look he’s labeled simply as that sweet, soft one that never fails to dawn on her when she finds a cup of tea or a piece of toast waiting for her after a shift, butter first, then a knife-pat and a half of jam.

And all that together is something he can’t help but keep looking back at.

He’s grateful when the song winds to its end and Juniper steps off his feet. She’s small enough and barefoot, too, but even so, the weight of a child balancing entirely on his toes isn’t exactly a comfortable thing.

“So what do I tell my mom?” Juniper asks, peeking around him at where he’s sure Polly is standing somewhere in the observable distance. “She’s going to ask me.”

Over his shoulder, he finds out that he’s dead on correct.

 _That it’s none of her business_ , Jughead thinks immediately. But Polly is beaming over at them almost manically, and a part of him thinks that it might be Betty’s sister’s stamp of approval — that she appreciates he’d let a forty pound child stomp on his feet in the name of humoring her and making her happy, that she’s impressed he’d spent the day with her family when she herself had been off at the Blossom pool party extravaganza having a real ball, and that maybe, she even thinks he’s worthy of being something important to her sister.

“Tell her I would need to ask Betty if I can go around calling myself her boyfriend first before I actually do that,” he says instead.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Betty starts teasingly, hands planted square on her hips as he makes his way back to her, “who knew the writer could dance?”

“Very funny. Get it all out now.”

“And _what_ a dancer he is.” 

“Honored you think so,” he jokes back in a play to lighten what he can’t help himself from saying next. “Did you want a turn?”

Jughead watches her run through the gamut of facial expressions as he holds his hand out to her, watches as her eyes widen and as her eyebrows fly up her forehead, and for a moment he feels like withdrawing his hand altogether and shoving it back into his pocket just so that he might wipe that look of shock off her face.

But he holds his hand steady because at the heart of it all, he does want her to take it.

And gently, like the current of wind sweeping across his face and brushing her hair to the side, she does.

Jughead leads them back to where he’d been standing before, but this time he very deliberately turns his back to Archie and his wolfish grin. Betty had looked nothing but surprised when he’d held his hand out to her so he’d expected her to be shy about it all. But when she turns to him, she moves in close and presses herself right up against him, drawing both his hand around her waist and hers around his neck.

“You don’t strike me as the dancing kind,” she starts conversationally, drumming her fingers against his shoulder blades. If she’s at all anxious or embarrassed or anything but at ease, he can’t tell nor can he hear it in her voice. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“The feet-thing with Juniper?” he asks, voice initially starting slightly higher than he’d intended. “My sister.”

“And me?”

“What, this?” Jughead asks, pressing his fingertips into her back just a whisper more firmly than he’d been doing before, a hint of strength to match the timbre his voice falls to. “This, I’m making up as I go. How am I doing?” 

Betty turns her answer into his ear — an admission that’s for him and him alone. “You’re a natural.”

When she looks up at him, kindly and gently, and a little like she might be in love with him, something unseen but carrying with it all the force in the world barrels straight into his chest, a freight train making a head-on collision. It isn’t anything real — it’s nothing tangible — and still, it’s the realest thing there is. It’s the fog clearing from the jumble of thoughts he’s been carrying with him for weeks now, and especially so today. It’s him taking the weight and armor off his shoulders and looking at it for exactly what it is.

For days and weeks now, his stomach has twisted when he thinks about leaving this place and his head has clouded when he thinks about moving on from her and continuing down the road less traveled alone. He’d thought dealing with all that would simply be an inevitably like so much else in his life is and has been, but now he wonders if it really has to be that way.

He’s been a wanderer because he’s had to be, and he’s been alone because he’s had to be that, too — it’s the life he’s chosen.

But, he thinks as the warm rush of her exhale brushes past his neck, he could choose differently if he wanted. He could stay, or at the very least, he could put to bed the idea of leaving tomorrow or the next day or even the next. He could stay and see what might blossom if he gave the girl who he doesn’t feel like leaving a real chance, one without a ticking clock hanging over her head — _their_ heads.

He could stay — there’s nothing stopping him from staying and there’s nothing standing in his way except his own self.

He could stay here with her and try, if she’d have him.

“You still there?” Betty asks, teasing in her voice as she gently shakes his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he answers quickly, clearing out the catch that grows in his throat as Archie’s low voice joins the melody he’d plucked his way through moments before. _Later_ , he resolves — _it’s a conversation for them and them alone_. “Yeah, sorry. Isn’t this a kids song?” Jughead peeks over his shoulder to Archie for any indication as to why he’d chosen this out of all songs, but his head is bowed down solemnly to the strings under his fingers. “ _Home on the Range_ , right?”

Betty smiles up at him then, sweetly and a little sadly. “It isn’t just a kids song,” she says. “I’m surprised you don’t know. I thought this was your wheelhouse.” 

“This again?” 

“Mmm hmm.”

“How many wheelhouses do you think I have? Not that I’m not flattered you apparently think I’m this fount of talent and knowledge.”

Betty laughs lowly, a pretty sound he feels vibrating under his fingers. “It’s a poem.”

“What’s a poem?”

“This song is,” she explains. “It wasn’t always a kids song. It started off as a poem. Some doctor wrote it, way back when in the nineteenth century.” 

“Get out. Really?”

“No finger tapping,” she says, gently lifting her fingers in show.

“Did you learn that from your Trivial Pursuit cards?”

She rolls her eyes. “I found this out all by myself. But who knows? Maybe it’s in the Family Edition.” 

“Never played that one. So how exactly is this particular children’s song in my wheelhouse?”

“Don’t you remember?” she asks, voice deep and filled with memory. “That night we met, I was reading _Endless Night_. You told me the title came from a Blake poem. This song does too. Well, kind of - you know what I mean.”

Of course he remembers; that rainy night isn’t something he thinks he’ll ever forget.

“Again Betts,” he says. “One instance of doing or knowing something does not a wheelhouse make. What?”

“Nothing,” Betty says quickly, bumping his foot with hers when she turns her eyes down towards the ground.

“What?” Jughead tries again.

“What did you just call me?" 

“Betty?” he says slowly, confused. 

“I think you called me Betts,” she tells him softly.

“Did I?” He asks it as blithely as he can, arching his hand up away from her back and leaving only his fingertips against the fabric of her dress. He can already feel the clamminess building, the moisture from the humidity building in his cupped palm.

“Mmm hmm.”

“Didn’t realize,” Jughead says for a lack of anything better. “Sorry.”

Betty’s head snaps up to meet his, so quickly that she nearly clips him square on his jaw. “Don’t be,” she says. “I liked it.”

That, he can’t help but smile at. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jughead says, and maybe it’s a trick of the eye or the firelight, but he thinks he sees her blush at that, just a little.

He could stay, he thinks again as her smile turns into a little low laugh, like she’s shy and bashful and in way too deep all at once.

He could stay here with her, just like this. They could be together here, just like this.

He thinks he just might want them to be.

“I used to sing this to him,” Betty says, so quietly that he wonders for a moment if he’s hasn’t misheard her over the music. “And Archie used to play it for him — before. It used to be the only thing he’d fall asleep to when he was a baby.”

“Oh,” Jughead says in slow, mortified understanding. “I can tell Archie to stop if-”

“Jug, it’s okay,” Betty cuts in, squeezing once at his shoulder for emphasis. “This isn’t that misguided of him for once.”

Jughead isn’t sure how it couldn’t be, but he isn’t going to be the one to question the understanding that exists between Archie and Betty. 

“I never wanted him to hate Riverdale,” she tells him, voice somewhere between the present and a time passed. “Whatever I may feel about this place – I never meant or wanted how I felt about it to be the way he did, too. It’s his home. Was, I mean. I wanted him to love it if he could.”

Jughead feels the shaky rise and fall of her back as she draws in a breath. “I wanted him to have the world,” Betty says. “I wanted him to see the world. There were so many times I thought about packing up everything and just going — driving north, south, east, and west and seeing everything there is to see. You’ll get it one day if you ever have kids. You want them to have everything — every experience, every sight, everything you never had yourself. It’s so powerful the way you want them to have everything. I’ve never wanted so little for myself and so much for someone else. But it wasn’t realistic to just pack up and go, the way it is for you. I needed the support and help. I needed to work and have someone watch him while I did; I needed people who knew exactly who I was while I tried to become someone a child could look up to and rely on. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t needed that, but I did.”

He won’t say it to her outright but he’s glad that she did. He’s always found himself good enough company to stave off the loneliness, but that doesn’t mean he’s never felt the brunt of it while traveling down the path he’s journeyed down either. He can’t imagine the same for Betty, doing the monumentally difficult thing that is parenting alone while out in the world by herself, with only the kindness of strangers to rely on. 

He’s been in that world and in his experience, strangers are rarely kind. He’s glad she had the village she needed to hold her up.

And still, he’s so overwhelmingly sad that someone as deserving and as good as Betty hasn’t seen and done so many of the things that he of all people has and consequently taken for granted.

“Sometimes I think I’d sing this song more for myself than for him,” she continues, her voice barely rising above the melody. “Maybe I was placating myself. Maybe I did it to make myself feel better. I couldn’t give him the life I wanted to, but I could give him this one here in this town. So, I’d sing him this and I’d hope that home would be enough.”

“How could it not have been?” Jughead says. “You gave him a good life. You loved him and cared for him — that’s more than a lot of other mothers can say.” They’re nearly the next words out of his mouth — that he would know. His mother had tried and she’d done what she was supposed to — she’d fed and clothed him and sent him off to school. But even now, he’s not truly sure if she’d done all those things out of love and care or simply out of obligation for the thing she brought into the world. But he holds his tongue — this isn’t about him.

“It’s been such a sad song since then,” Betty reflects. “I haven’t really wanted anything to do with it.”

“I don’t think anyone would expect you to.”

“But I loved it once. I think Archie just wants me to love it again, you know? Associate another good memory with it.”

“And this is a good memory?” Jughead asks quietly, leaning back slightly to glean a better look at her face. He wants it to be for her, more than anything. He thinks it might be one of the best memories he’s had in a while, but he isn’t so presumptuous as to think that this simple moment could ever top memories as precious and as irreplaceable as the ones she holds in her heart.

But then her voice comes to him, floating gently between the ebbs and flows of the chords that dip and swirl around them in the summer’s breeze.

“I think,” she says as she so tentatively brings her head down to rest against the curve of his shoulder, “this might even be a great memory.”

 

* * *

 

In bed, she’s leaning against him, somewhere between sitting up and laying down, and the AC he’d fixed is blowing straight at them. It’s her word, fixed, not his — he can hardly call tinkering with the thing for the better part of two hours, nearly dropping it straight out the window, and giving it one final, frustrating thump only to miraculously jerk it into action fixing anything, but he appreciates her confidence in his lackluster handyman skills.

“Happy fourth?” Jughead asks, idly combing his fingers through her hair as she scrolls through Netflix.

He feels rather than sees her nod against his shoulder. “Happy fourth,” she agrees.

Half asleep and far more than halfway content, he watches as she browses through her options, hovering for a moment over something or other before shaking her head to herself. It’s a little mundane detail that he’s noticed about her, that she sometimes talks and gestures to herself, but still — he loves the moments she does it anyhow.

“Watch _The Office_ ,” Jughead encourages, shrugging his shoulder slightly to draw her attention — chances are, he’ll be asleep by minute five. “It’s fine.”

Betty clicks right to it, and he figures it’s what she’d wanted all along.

“I think you secretly like it,” she says knowingly, moving the laptop so that it balances on her right knee and his left.

“I never said I didn’t.”

“I swear you did.”

“What I said was that it makes me feel like I should be doing work and that, I don’t like about it.”

Betty snorts. “Exactly what about this show makes you think you should do work?”

“That they spend ninety-nine percent of the show in a literal office.”

“Yeah, where they spend ninety-nine percent of the time actively not working.”

“The fact that they’re there, trapped in that little tuna can of a building and slaves to the dreg that is corporate America is beyond enough. By the way, remind me that there’s something I wanted to ask you about tomorrow.”

He doesn’t see it, but he doesn’t need to — he knows she’s quirking an eyebrow at him. “Okay,” Betty says slowly and apprehensively.

“Nothing bad,” Jughead smooths over. _He hopes._ “I just don’t want to forget.” He’s bluffing a little because there’s no way he’s about to forget what he wants to talk to her about, but he doesn’t want her spending all night thinking about it either.

“You could just tell me now,” she says, poking a finger into his ribs.

“I could, but-”

There’s a sharp, almost cutting knock that interrupts her and even through her closed bedroom door it’s one that comes so loudly that Betty flinches against him. His own heart lurches before kicking up into overtime.

Betty turns and looks at him then, and there's no need for her to say a word; he understands. The moon is hanging high, the stars are out, and even the crickets have stopped chirping, all symbols and signifiers that everyone should’ve been tucked away in their beds long ago, even taking the holiday into account — that’s just the Riverdale way.

“I’ll get it,” he offers, pulling on his sweatpants and t-shirt slung over the chair in the corner, even though he doesn’t quite know how he’ll be able to tell her if Polly and co. crashed on the way home to Greendale, or if Alice Cooper accidentally choked on an olive pit while washing down her umteenth martini of the day.

Because he knows as well as anyone else that there’s only that kind of news at this hour.

Jughead flicks on the porch light before pulling open the door. The night that greets him is the same one they’d been dancing in before, but it’s heavier now and darker, too, carrying with it the twin swords of premonition and foreboding.

“Hey,” he says, and even though Betty’s voice rings in his head, gently reminding him to shut the door quickly lest all the mosquitoes in the state decide to camp out in the house, he holds the door open wide in invitation.

Beyond it, Archie looks frazzled and unkempt, hair sticking up at all angles, and worry creased into his forehead. Jughead thinks for a moment it’s because it’s him standing behind the door instead of Betty, but the way Archie’s standing, rocking back and forth in his feet with his hands tugging absentmindedly at his unkempt hair, right hand following the left, tells Jughead quickly it has nothing to do with him.

“Hey man,” Archie starts, “I know it’s late — I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jughead says it on instinct, but he has a feeling it’s not. “We were still up.”

“Is Betty here?”

Jughead’s eyes narrow at the question and he wonders for a moment if Archie is drunk. _This is Betty’s house you’re at_ , he wants to say.

“You okay?” he offers instead.

“Yeah,” Archie says quickly. “No.”

“Yeah, no?”

“It’s just — Veronica’s gone.”

Behind him, he’s vaguely aware of the sound of Betty’s footsteps, and he can see her so clearly even without facing her — bare shoulders covered up with her floral bathrobe, hair thrown back up in a ponytail ready for action, concern poorly masked and given away by her wide eyes.

And then there’s Archie, who can’t even bring himself to look over to her.

“I don’t know what to do,” Archie says, and it’s one of the very few times Jughead has seen so strong a man look as lost and broken as Archie does.

He looks back to Betty for some or any kind of guidance and watches as her hands come up to tuck the folds of her robe firmly together. Her fingers flutter shakily as they travel from the lapels to the base of her neck, tension rising in her knuckles and bringing out the blues of her veins as she grips hard. To him, it’s almost as though she’s trying to anchor herself firmly to a world turning into one she quickly can’t recognize.

Jughead waits for her to say something. He knows the words that she wants to offer — that it’s okay, that it can’t mean what they all think it means, that it’s all a misunderstanding, that it’s all going to be fine — and she even opens her mouth once or twice in an attempt to get those words of comfort out.

But they never come.

“You should come in,” Jughead fills in for her, and with a hand laid firmly over Archie’s shoulder, he guides his friend across the threshold and into the house.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Primrose means "I can't live without you."
> 
> Suggested Listening  
> “Red & White & Blue & Gold” — Aoife O’Donovan  
> “American Honey Blonde”- Woodlock  
> “Sugar, Sugar” — The Archies  
> "Late to the Party" - Kacey Musgraves  
> “The Sun and the Moon” — Annalise Emerick  
> “Arlington” — The Wailin’ Jennys  
> “Home on the Range” (Instrumental Version) — I like the version by Steven C on Spotify. A fun fact for you all- this is the song that hugely inspired this fic!


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